Thanks for the quick reply and all your help! I think I'll go with that advice and swap to SQ once I've got Silver on NZ.

Not knowing much about how FFPs work I would have thought that even with economy one should be able to earn status rather quickly if flying such long distances all the time. Roughly 35,000 kms per return trip to Europe amounts to quite a bit if there's a handful of trips like that per year.

Thanks for the heads-up about UA and AA opening flights to the US as well. That would actually tie-in nicely with my next trip end of July. UA is part of *A, right?