Originally Posted by
angetenar
Be aware that upgrades are primarily a US phenomenon, for foreign airlines, expect to fly in the cabin that you paid for. Where do you want award flights to?
Would you consider yourselves price sensitive?
Airlines have access to select award availability on alliance partners, and airlines also have different pricing for awards. Aeroplan has a large number of partners and attractive pricing, and both the Turkish and Aegean programs make it relatively early to earn Star Alliance Gold status.
Transferring miles does not usually count towards status. Note that airlines have better award availability for their own flights, so Avianca Lifemiles has access to less award seats than United Mileage plus on United flights from IAD to Europe. Also, do pay attention to mile expiration policies. United miles don't expire which is nice for many, but they also aren't a transfer partner for Capital One.
Thank you for your response, angetenar. For us, future international destinations include Scotland, England, Ireland, Spain, Portual, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Argentina and India. We also want to vacation within the US (LAX,SEA,DEN) too, which makes it hard for us to decide between LifeMiles and MileagePlus. We are somewhat price sensitive; we won't be shelling out $ to fly in the front of the cabin anytime soon, though we do pay extra for "L" seats on Avianca when we fly to Bolivia and we are tempted at the prospect of using miles to purchase J or F tickets when we fly to Europe. We'd never let the price of an airline ticket to dictate where we choose to go on vacation. Nonetheless, I have chosen Avianca for our previous two flights to Bolivia because they had the lowest price even though the timing of BoA's MIA-VVI flight is preferable as it means we avoid having to be awake at 3am to go through Bolivian customs.