Gah! Thank you so much for the insight! Definitely helped with my decision making in putting more attention to the final 2 programs. (Now that we have bunch of time on the ground! haha.)
As you mentioned above, I think I would be in a niche market where UA's MP might work okay for me, but again their threshold is too high for me with just couple J trips between the Pacific (with the regular 10k PQP). Though you did have a point on them taking care of their own elites. Interesting options for Miles&Go. With your advice, I spent some time looking into Miles&Go. While the earning rates for P fares from NH and UA are amazing, their redemption rate was off the chart bad. I did a dummy booking for TPE-JFK -> they want 230k one-way in Y. Not sure if I did it correctly on that...
I think every program has is give and take, and right now I am looking the comparison between UA and AC's mid/upper tier comparison. I doubt I would reach to SE/1K, but I hope with the right routing I could get to to 50k/75k vs. UA Gold/Plat. I notice the AC AQD issue is not as sever as it seems for me, since foreigners got 50% off. It's just in the end if AC J and its service is worth for the re-routing to Canada, and the AC J is more comfy than UA Polaris?
Again! Thank you so much!!!