There has been so much written about this over the last year or two, including SRB himself saying in 2011 that VS would announce an alliance membership by the summer of that year.

Yes we'd still like it to happen but I think it's now off the agenda. Because a) VS obviously hasn't been able to decide, but more importantly b) there are signs that VS, VA, and VX are aligning their FF schemes and talking about offering reciprocal benefits. This and the recent code sharing between VX and VA, soon to extend to VS, points the way to go methinks.