A (good) friend of mine wants to gift me miles through his credit card program that can transfer miles to a variety of frequent flyer programs without fees. My goal is to ultimately get from Chicago to Phuket in Business or First. But it looks like it may be better to fly to Bankok or Singapore instead and get a local flight the rest of the way (fewer points, more flight options, etc, plus a free layover).

Delta is my primary rewards program. The business-class flights there seem to cost 175,000 to 205,000 points (plus $250-$500) round-trip. A benefit of using Delta is that if the flight gets canceled I get the points back into an account I can actually use. I also consider the risk of them going bankrupt and both canceling my flights and making my points worthless is low.

Should I consider having my friend transfer into another airline instead? Are there airlines where this would cost much fewer points? Would it be suspicious if I open a new FF account, transfer in a bunch of points, and then book a flight with all of them? I have read that you can get your miles disqualified if you purchase miles (not what I'm doing but it could look like that).