I'm hoping this forum can help me with this question. My search turned up some information, but nothing that really offered a complete answer.

I will be moving this year from the U.S. to Sydney, Australia. I've been a long-time *A flyer under UA Mileage Plus, 4 of the past 5 years at 1K. While UA isn't the greatest sometimes, I do like the airlines in *A and agree that it's the best alliance available.

I've answered the forum questions based on my new situation after the move:

(1) What is your home airport? SYD
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Y within Australia-New Zealand, J elsewhere
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? ~75k BIS miles
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? UA 1K
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? priority services and rebooking assistance
(6) Which routes do you fly most often SYD-AKL, SYD-SIN, SYD-NRT/HND, SYD-SFO-ORD
(7) Preferred Airlines UA and AC for now, but SQ and NZ for better service
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? 80% travel for work and can choose airlines when UA not available

The problem is that there is no *A carrier based in Australia. My new situation will include 1-2 trips back to the US, flights to New Zealand once per quarter or so, and probably 2x per year to Singapore, one to Japan. All of those would be in J. Clearly those flights can all be on *A carriers - NZ, SQ, NH (or for that matter connections on TG, CA, OZ, BR, ZH). The key question is - should I continue to accrue my mileage with UA, or should I switch to one of the other *A carriers? Or perhaps I should try a status match to Qantas and go over to OneWorld (gasp!)?

Please advise, thanks!