Thankyou for your responses. I see I should have provided more information (it was too late last night when I posted). We live in the US and my daughter will be studying in Melbourne. The flight does qualify for miles from SQ. My question was how to determine which of the Star Alliance partners ff programs she should join since I am a little leery of the US airlines that have been close to bankruptcy in the past few years. If the miles are easily used among all the Star Alliance members, then I thought she might as well join SQ ff program.