OK, but if that is the criterion, both Skyteam and Oneworld would be pretty much useless compared to *A I guess. For my trips within Europe that require a change, regardless of the part of the continent I am trying to reach and where I am leaving from, *A invariable offers the fastest connections. Of course, if you are based in the hub of one of the ST or OW members such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, or Rome, things will be different but then it is not a network issue but a 'captive audience' issue which is rather more idiosyncratic.

I also think that if we include 'network' in the evaluation of FFPs then there are so many other things that we should take into account that would take us away from earning and burning. One of the most obvious is lounge quality and access. The Skyteam lounges are generally ok, but to be honest, they are HUGELY inferior to Oneworld lounges on average, particularly for top tier elites. Honestly, if my choice is (1) Qantas F lounge at SYD or MEL (which are outstanding), CX the Wing F or Pier F (which are outstanding), the BA Galleries First (which is excellent) and KL First lounge (which is somewhere between excellent and outstanding) on the one hand and (2) the AF 2E S4 lounge (which is good), the KL Crown Club at AMS (which is ok), the KE C lounge at ICN (which is good) and the CI C lounge at TPE (which is OK), I wouldn't even hesitate for a billionth of a second. *A is a bit more unequal, but for example the TK lounge at IST is truly excellent too. And then we could mention other things such as the fact that AA will protect your itinerary if you are arriving from another OW flight even if you are on two separate itineraries.

So while I agree that individual decisions will take all those things onboard, I think that they may make a relatively straightforward reality (FB is a poor FFP) look more complicated because of things which may sometimes be very dependent on individual travel patterns. Until recently, the basics (earn/burn) were also dependent on individual travel patterns, but with those last changes I would say that FB has managed the remarkable achievement of becoming a bad programme for everyone.

The one exception, mentioned by stimpy and brunos is that it makes it easy for people who take many flights on super cheap short sectors to make Platinum. By making domestic segments count for abonnes members FB will now ensure that it indeed multiplies further the number of Platinum members extending top tier membership to people who may only fly those flights which, according to AF themselves, cost the airline money. The number of Platinums will thus increase and undoubtedly justify AF and KL treating us even worse than they already do because there will be 'too many of us', which, in their view, will incidentally prove their success. This is a choice. Some of my colleagues who fly in AF and KL long haul J several times every year spending over €20,000 a year will remain gold while other people can achieve platinum on segments for under €2,500. That's a choice and I have no problem with AF-KL making that choice if this is what they want. But when they finance that choice by making status far worse for everyone, I will admit to having my serious reservations. Already, the airlines have been shaving benefit after benefit away from their high status customer (honestly, for example, even though I was never and never will be gold myself, I can only reassert how disgusting the way KL treats our Gold friends is nowadays). Conversely, being top tier on all three alliances, I can honestly say that I think that ST elite plus is the most useless of all three when it comes to being accommodated in cases of irrops and travel incidents (in my experience OW emerald is best and while not at all systematic, it is not unusual that airlines staff will bend over backwards to help in such cases, which never seems to happen on ST -- note: I'm talking alliances here - for instance, DL are fabulous at sorting out problems for their own elites, but not for elites from partner airlines). So FB's strategy seems to be to ensure that they create a frequent flyer programme which is so totally useless that it does not make much of a difference to have a few more or few fewer top tier members.

So yes, it is easy to reach to reach FB Gold flying 30 segments or eveb Platinum, which, as mentioned by everyone else, is not different at all on AF (a bit more on KL now because Gold's keep losing benefits) flying 60 segments. But at what price?...