Nebratu:

Thanks. Yeah, UA was the obvious choice that came to me first too. Unfortunately, trying to get her to fly one airline and one airline only is more or less impossible. She doesn't yet realize that the extra $10-15 she would pay to fly her airline of choice instead of the cheapest option comes with lots of other benefits, and she'll be damned if she's going to listen to her older (and naturally wiser ) brother. Also, many times there are schedule issues when there really are only a couple of choices. Therefore, I am trying to cover as many choices as possible through the least amount of FF programs, so that hopefully she can get status on one or two of them and can actually enjoy some of the benefits that come along with that.

I think that one Skyteam (probably NW), one *A (probably UA), and one OW (probably AA) would suit her the best. However, this combination leaves out Virgin Atlantic all together, I think, and the thing that was attractive about AS is that that would cover most of the Skyteam airlines as well as AA (though no EQM for CO, if I remember correctly).