Unfortunately, no chance of making UGS since none of my J travel is on United (I live in Europe and due to company policy, I only get J travel on flights over 8 hours ... i.e. all Asia-Pac flights in J while U.S. flights are in coach, and AA/VS are the preferred carriers across that pond).

I would totally have jumped for QF until I saw their minimum 4 segment requirements. Since a trip to Aussie is not in the cards, I would have to gamble that either HKG or BKK would come up at some point. Likely, yes, but enough to bank on? Hm...

Sounds like AA might be the way to go after all. What about Finnair or JAL? I don't know anything about their programs...