The long game with can actually be your advantage if you can somehow make it to get Million Miler status with UA, while meeting the annual 10K PQP (which will most likely rise at some point). Within *A, TK would be my recommendation as it is a milage based program (depending on fare class of course), and you seem to really want *G benefits. With 70K annually, you should easily requalify for *G as their program requires 40K to qualify for their Elite status in the first year and then 60K in the subsequent two-year requalification period. Beware that TK is not always known for great customer service, but I haven't had too many issues myself. Please check out the Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles thread for more info, and good luck!
I agree M&S is a nice program but for someone living in the US spending the miles might be a bit hard.
Plus not all of those UA and LH/LX flights will earn you miles at 100% rate. For the European flights you can consider TK.
Thanks both! Mostly confirms my thoughts.
I probably should have mentioned, my GF does have M&S status and keeping it isn't too hard. Annoyingly we got close to Elite Plus once but didn't make it, and the TK cabin upgrade certs might have been a useful perk on an SFO-IST flight. Oh well...
But redeeming miles and the TK award charts have definitely been less favorable. (At least with OZ I've had decent luck with a few *A upgrade awards, and their award chart has been decent but OZ is picky with US cards and I couldn't actually book a recent award ticket...)
So, I guess where I'm at:
- TK should be easy for me to maintain
- TK won't help as much for earning on LH/LX PE routes (upcoming trip would likely be an LX N fare which is 0% on TK... though I have had luck with switching the mileage program at the LX/LH lounge when this happened once where I credited to UA...)
- TK's award chart has mixed value, but there are some decent options, like potential UA flights
- UA Gold would definitely be more useful for me locally, but probably harder to maintain
- Highly SFO specific, but the Maple Leaf Lounge works with *A Gold, but specifically not UA Gold—and they usually have a barista and/or a good mezcal Negroni.
- Getting lifetime UA status for require moving more international flying to UA, which isn't a problem but other *A partners have better PE and upgrade deals. It's also a stretch.
The easy answer is to credit to UA, not over think things and not encourage extra upgrades/etc. Or not care so much about status! But who am I kidding? I love playing the game.