Best alliance for travel out of Israel
 

I'm based in Israel and travel quite a bit all over the world. I'm currently with star alliance, which is great for travel to US and EU. The problem is Asia - often times I end up flying through FRA, which is quite a bit of a de-tour.

Istanbul is a relatively big hub and is close by, but I've found that I can almost never combine tickets with Turkish and many other star alliance members (ANA for example). Which is a problem as very often travel to places which require domestic flights.

So, I'm a bit puzzled and frustrated. Right now, for example, I need to go to Sanya, China and the options are:
1. 14 hours, one stop with Cathay Pacific
2. 23 hours, two stops with Lufthansa

Bummer...any bright ideas which alliance would be best for me?

There is no rule that says you need to only fly with one alliance, if your routes to Asia works best with CX, you can see if oneworld works for you for your other flights, although their presence in Europe is far from being ideal unless you fly a lot to the UK/Spain

Of course, but it is unlikely I will reach gold status with one world let's say if I do this.

Do you typically fly J/F or Y?

If, J/F, status benefits are less important, and I'd recommend the following:

1. a Star Alliance FFP as your primary program
2. Alaska MileagePlan as your secondary program - which has plenty of airline partners (mainly OneWorld and Skyteam, plus some non-affiliated airlines9.

AI now flies direct to DEL and can possibly serve as a *A connecting carrier

OW is great from Israel to Asia and North America, but Gruimed also spoke about the EU, and OW from Israel would mean flying through either MAD, LHR or HEL, which would involve significant backtracking for most destinations. The solution could be to join the QF program, and use LY on the EU flights where backtracking via LHR is not a great option.

LY is decent and offers a proper business class throughout EU (think USA domestic first but with legrest). RJ has several flight from TLV (a 45 minute flight if that) and then from AMM a number of major EU cities and also offers a proper business class.