Originally Posted by
PaceLaw2012
my experience as a *A FO and DL (long time) dirt is that the award availability/value of *A miles is superior to DL Skypesos. What you should do, IMO, is fly United/*A, and get both an Aegean Airlines (A3) and United FF account. b/c A3 gives you * gold status at only 24,000 miles, and it lasts for 3 years (or so the theory goes, not entirely sure based on T&C). Credit the first 24,000 miles to A3, and then credit the remaining miles to United. With the A3 *G, you get access to all *A lounges in the US, and don't need to be flying internationally, plus you get the other benefits of being *G w/ United. Congrats on the job, BTW.
With A3, you need 20K elite miles to reach Star Gold. They give you 1K miles for registering. Therefore you need to fly 19K miles.
When crediting to A3, the cheaper CO/UA fare buckets earn only 50%
Whereas all cheap buckets on US earn 100% on A3.
If using lounge based on A3 Gold, then A3 expects you to credit the flight miles to them. There have some anecdotal reports that A3 disqualifies pax who get 20K miles just for gaining lounge access through system, and then credit miles elsewhere.