Go for the carrier who fits your network. If a lot of TPACs, go UA, not US
Definitely agree with this - the underlying theme is that airlines treat their own elites a lot better than they treat alliance elites. That means a TPAC regular should probably align their status and mileage accumulation to the metal they'll actually be spending time on for those long flights.
(Disclaimer: I don't know the nuances of all of the Asian FFP's. If there's a compelling reason why, say, an ANA flier would accumulate on US instead of ANA, I'm not aware of it.)
look at the nonstops from your airport
Indeed...a nonstop almost always trumps a connection. Flyertalkers might not mind flying a strange routing ("mileage run") to top off a status but nobody really wants to do this unnecessarily for your regular trips...
See if you can maximize your status with a CC.
For mid level status, you can generally use the cards to get to *A gold easily
US has a personal and biz MC from Barclays.
UA has the PP card.
What's the highest amount of EQM/PQM's you could get easily? (Without a high degree of spending on the cards....) Seems like it'd be about 20k...or will they let you stack 5-10 cards and get many sign-up bonuses? I know Chase used to do this long ago but has since stopped.