1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
upgrades, priority services, baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, lounge access, etc.
>>> Reply:

Ranked by importance:
1) Family Pooling - as I will be travelling mostly with my spouse
2) Lounge Access
3) Seating Comfort - as we generally take long haul flights

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
less than 25000 miles, 50000+ miles and 20-25 flights, etc.
>>> Reply:

Domestic (US) - We fly about 2-3x a year to see my spouse's family (via New York JFK - Chicago ORD) - frequently with Southwest, and occasionally with Jetblue for other fav vaca hotspots (New York JFK - Florida MCO)

Internationally (Asia) - We fly usually up to 2x a year to Asia to see my family (New York JFK - Singapore SIN = 9k-10k miles [with layover]). My spouse also has family in Taiwan (New York JFK - TW = 7k-8k miles)

As our questions are more specific to our international travels, I would say we hit just about 50k-60k if we pool out miles together.

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
first, business, premium economy, economy
>>> Reply:

Usually Economy (Y), but we are willing to pay for upgrades if we take long haul flights.

For domestic, we take whatever is the cheapest.

4. Are you able to choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
>>> Reply:

We travel for pleasure, mostly to see family, but would love to capitalize and accrue our points for the future to do long-term travelling (in about 2-3 years time)

5. Which routes do you fly most often?
transatlantic, domestic USA, intra-Asia, etc.
>>> Reply:

As mentioned we have family in Chicago/Taiwan/Singapore

Domestic is about 2-3x a year JFK -> ORD

International 1x-2x JFK-> SIN, or JFK -> TPE

6. What is your home airport?
>>> Reply:

JFK

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in each FFP, if any?
>>> Reply:

We have about 12k in Jetblue, 30k in Southwest, none international yet - that's why we are here to seek advice on a good *A FFP for our situation

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
>>> Reply: We recently just came back from a Multi City Trip

JFK - BKK: We took Emirates and we loved our A380 experience to Dubai (then layover to BKK), even though we paid economy, but the seating were very spacious, we felt like we were flying premium economy. We pooled all those points into Jetblue because they were the only partners available to what we will use.

BKK - SIN: We flew budget, TigerAir, not sure if we can credit any points, but those we negligible in our aspect.

SIN - JFK: We flew back with Turkish (I know we should have sticked to 1 alliance, but we wanted to test out how different flights felt), both our flights home were awful, even with the layover at Istanbul. Seats were narrow, food was awful and we felt perpetually suffocated because they were blasting the heat on. We didn't really know how the points system worked so we tried signing up a membership account via the website after our trip. The sign up keep giving us an error on the security question with no drop down option. We called customer service, but was answered by an outsourced office in India which could not even sign us up as members via the phone. We hung up frustrated and realized we were so glad that we didn't as the points could go to a more valuable *A partner

Having said that, we researched a few favs (home country flights obv), Eva, Singapore - but were greeted with strict redemption rules and 2 years point expiration system. SG Air doesn't allow pooling, so we are eliminating it. Eva has a very confusing "points transfer" policy on their webpage. They allow points transfer, but quoting from their website "the transferred mileage cannot combined with the transferee's own mileage or any mileage transferred by a 3rd party." - So what's the point of offering a points transfer system in the first place?

Now we are looking into ANA, as they have a family pooling system, and have flights via JFK. But however, we are unsure of their redemption system.

We haven't flew Aegean or Asiana, we know those give very good status membership to access the *A partners lounge, however we also want our points to steer towards a more comfortable flight that we can redeem for upgrades in the long run. For a fact, we have decided that we'll never take Turkish Air again based on our last experience.

We also currently have 35k worth of points in our Chase Sapphire preferred card, if we transfer these points into our chosen *A FFP, will those points count to earn us status as Gold? As Gold members gets to bring a guest in for any lounge access. This might be another deal breaker for us to choose our *A FFP too.

I know there are no completely WIN situations for all FFP, but we don't think our expectations are that outrageous, we just want to pick best the value for our buck that fit our priorities - which is comfort and upgrades. Hope you guys can chime in your thoughts and help us make a more informed decision.