(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, LAX, MCO, etc.) - SFO (Intl) and SMF (domestic)
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.) - C
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k) - 8-9 RT x 20,000 miles (actual)
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Silver, M&M Senator etc) - AA Plat Exec
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (Frequent upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, good award redemption rates, free lounge access, etc.) - good award redemption/availability and hopefully low award fees (though I am wiling to pay higher fees in return for good availability.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc) - Mostly transpacs to India. Other than that, I fly mostly on Southwest in the US.
(7) Preferred Airlines - SQ, CX.
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?) mostly for work. I can choose carrier and fly J.

Hello.

I travel 8-9 times per year RT between SFO and CCU in business. Currently, I travel on CX/KA and collect miles on AA. I am looking to change to SQ for the following reasons:

1. The 4-4:30 flight between CCU-HKG on KA is horrible The seat is pathetic, and the Indian Veg Meal and servicel is worse than SQ economy
2. The India Vegetarian Meals on CX are cheap economy class meals, which almost never change. I have literally been served the same exact pre-landing breakfast on HKG-SFO for the past 25 flights in the last 3-5 years.
3. Fares are about US$500 cheaper on SQ - which admittedly is not the biggest factor.
4. The hard/soft product on SQ is much better than CX.

The option I am looking at is traveling on SQ, with their non stop flights. The food, service, and seat are all better. While CX has more flights to SFO daily, both have about the same frequency to CCU.

Besides SQ, I know the other *A option is AI, but I don't fee safe flying with them, aside from their poor hard/soft product.

My other option would be to stick to One World and fly QR, but I don't like traveling on ME airlines. When things go wrong with schedule changes/missed flights/lost baggage, they are difficult to deal with.

I used to fly EK, but they have a 7-8 layover in Dubai (each way), which I want to avoid now.

My question is which *A carrier should I fly on to get max mileage with the optimal combination of reward availability and reasonable award taxes, should I decide to switch to SQ.

If it makes any difference in choosing a FFP, I can list an India address or US address.

Thanks in advance for your help.