I am curious to know about the experience that elite level Lifemiles members have, especially flying Colombia to the USA. UA and COPA are divorcing their programs next year, and I think I'm not going to be satisfied with either of those as a stand-alone program. I live near MDE and fly to the USA about 20X a year and do a little intra-Colombia flying as well, so I've been thinking about switching my *A program to Lifemiles.

I like flying AV, and it seems to me that combined with TACA/LACSA there are more flights to the USA than offered by COPA. I have also started flying AA a lot, and my plan is to keep mid-tier elite level with AA and a *A carrier so that I can pick the best route and prices for a given trip and still have lounge access and a good shot at an upgrade. It's helpful that I can get to Gold on Lifemiles with only 40K miles.

My specific questions are:

1) I see that there are complimentary upgrades. If I'm on SAL-USA or BOG-USA routes, will I have a good shot at getting an upgrade?

2) How is the upgrade list prioritized? I tend to look for low fares and book a couple of weeks out. I see that AV does upgrades for all levels 48 hours out, and I am wondering if a Silver on a higher fare would be ahead of me.

3) A lot of the flights that would work well for me connect through SAL and are on TACA/LACSA. As noted above, I have been pretty satisfied with AV in both economy and business. Can I expect the same of the other two airlines?

4) I haven't read a lot of horror stories about connecting in SAL, so I'm assuming it's generally a painless process. Is that correct?

5) If I am regularly connecting through SAL, do I need to have a yellow fever certificate? I'm assuming I don't need one for normal connections, but I'm thinking there might be an occasion where IRROPS might require that I stay overnight in a hotel.

6) Is the lounge in SAL decent? One thing I don't like about COPA is that the lounge experience is not as good as AV. Is the SAL lounge like an AV lounge?

Thank in advance for any insight you can offer, and if there are salient points that I have overlooked, I would like to hear about them.