Skywards or Mileage Plan
 

This may have been answered somewhere else, if so please feel free to redirect me (I couldn't find it via search).

I will likely fly a few times for work on Emirates (business class) this year (3-5 times at most). Since I have focused most of my travel on American and Delta flights I am trying to figure out the best way to capture the miles from my trips. Based on what I researched, I could either go with Skywards and try to use the miles for Emirates flights or have the mileage in Alaska Air (I don't fly that airline either). It seems like with Alaska Air I will have a better way to use them within the states or with US based carriers.

Anyone else gone through the same issues and decided on one vs. the other (or am I missing some other option to make the best use of my miles).

Thanks.

AS MP if you want to redeem on non-EK travel, and generally better value. If you are going to accrue sufficient miles for a decent redemption. 5x LH J should give you probably in the region of 70-100k miles on EK, not sure on AS. EK redemptions are tricky, depending on the point of departure taxes and surcharges are quite high, and availability can be hard to come bye, also the miles required can be quite high.

MP only makes sense for those based in N America I decided.

MP has a great selection of partners but rewards generally have to involve a flight to or from US and nearly all boardroom lounges are in North America.

As it sounds like OP is US based and will only fly EK a bit, I would recommend MP over Skywards. For me, who is not based in US and does not plan to visit soon, Skywards unfortunately makes more sense.

I am in a similar situation as well. I'm a DL Plat and am now looking to bank some miles between DL and EK. I was thinking about AS as well, but recently DL and AS broke up and I don't think I'd use AS anywhere in the US/Canada for domestic travel, anyways. DL awards have been good, bad and ugly at times, but still free travel beats paid travel, any day. If you travel consistently then I'd say split your travel between AA and EK. Or you can try banking your miles to EY or QR flights which are oneworld partner airlines.

I'd just credit to EK and you'll probably have enough after a trip or 2 to upgrade to F.