Sorry if this question is covered elsewhere, but I haven't been able to find it by searching.

I have learned from reading the FT forums that Egypt air allows not only pooling of redeemable miles between family members, but also allows the main account holder to achieve status based upon flights taken by relatives. Since I often travel with 2 children, if I credit all of our family's *A flights to an Egypt Air account, I could achieve *A status pretty easily. My question is, since I never fly on Egypt Air itself, would this status be of much use on the *A airlines that I actually fly, UA and LH? I have lots of UA RDMs from credit cards. Would having *A gold from Egypt Air help me in using these miles for upgrades, or would I still be at the end of the line because I don't have status on UA itself? Any advice would be appreciated.