I hope I am not hijacking the OP's thread but I have a similar question.

I am based in BLR and I do about 4 business trips and 1 personal trip to LAX a year. All of them in business class. I do some regional travel within Asia, both West Asia and South East Asia.

The benefits that I primarily seek are upgrade opportunities for long haul personal trips and award opportunities for long haul trips (Europe, US). Lounge benefits not a priority as I fly business class most of the time.

SQ is probably the best airline I have flown but they dont have benefits similar to that of UA/AA in terms of 1K/ExPlt privileges. Booking SQ miles on UA doesnt work well as there is no concept of points and even with 4 trips I will not make it to 1K.

Cathay is decent and they have a pretty good partnership with AA. I can get points on AA and by 3 trips I will be pretty close to 100K points and ExecPlt. I dont like the award options from India to North america on OneWorld. I dont think you can use AA miles for booking BA in the transantlantic segments and I havent been successful in getting CX tickets using AA miles. System wide upgrades have to be used on AA metal only which is a bummer (atleast UA allows on Lufthansa).

My ideal preference would be to fly SQ and get to 1K (or equivalent in other carriers with system wide upgrades on long haul ...) with my 4 business trips. Any suggestions?

Thanks.