Wish I would have listened/known this advice years ago. At 900k flown miles on Delta, my flying from/to Asia is almost all on *Alliance carriers now due to comfort, cost and the ability to actually use SWUs

Same here... about ready to send Delta my Platinum card and tell them where they can shove it. Sick and tired of that airline and their "partner" Air France.

My suggestion is to go with *A. Skyteam can give you for sure a status earlier (30 flights and you are gold) but I do not see much value with them.
OW could be interesting if you fly mainly through UK with BA as Finnair and Malev are not covering that much Europe and Iberia is not that interesting.

Look where you fly and then decide.

So I choose *A with UA and now I have to plan my next trip to Europe (France, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania).

Any way I tried to book my trip using UA or *A, the prices were far from realistic.

Even just the portion for LAX to NCE and back was over 5.5K with AU (for Economy !!!).

Also, all the flights in Europe are with affiliates so I have zero chance to upgrade.

Ended up booking my transatlantic with AA for a fraction of the price (Although, now I am stuck in economy of course).

Still need to figure out the European portion (maybe AirPass?).

Is there any (reasonable) way to use my AU to upgrade with other *A partners?

without a doubt its star, there are no so many options for redemptions especially in N America (4 carriers).

And if looking for a particular Star program, CO is the best unless you feel you can hit 100K/yr then go with UA.

Delta Airlines is so very awful in terms of award ticket pricing and availability when it comes to using miles on DL flights that I have cut back on my use of SkyTeam and shifted the business elsewhere as much as I could.

SkyTeam might as well be called SkyTrash.

Star is anyday better. More airlines, more routes, more availability

No. Upgrades across partners is not something that any of the global alliances do in a reasonable manner. If you want to sit up front you either need to be on a reward flight redeemed in the forward cabin or buy the ticket there.

Go to the AA forum and look at the stickie that describes the Gold/Plat Challenges. Once you have Plat you get lounge access on future international trips and get 100% rdm bonus.

Notwithstanding all that has been said above, there's one BIG problem with *A. that I have not yet been able to resolve. They lack a LHR-AMS direct route.

BMI was the only *A carrier doing that flight, and they are about to drop it.

Therefore, if you fly LHR-AMS with any regularity, SkyTeam would be my recommended option.

How does oneworld compare to SkyTeam?

If ST awards aren't competitive, would oneworld be an option? I do plan to go to Sydney and flying the A380 on Quantas from LAX is a draw.

But mostly fly to Europe otherwise.

I've been pretty happy with OW award redemptions thru both AA and BA. I find pretty good availability for what I am looking for (PacNW departures to Europe or Asia in Biz or First). That said, I have a big presence on *A too because OW doesn't always work.

I'd recommend getting one of the various tools that lets you look at OW and *A availability (I use the KVS tool as a one stop shop for both) and then do some searches for things you'd contemplate using miles for.

The next step is to figure out where you want to bank miles, and for that you need to look carefully at the programs. US programs tend to give more miles for discounted fare classes, but non-US programs can have appeal if you fly only premium classes. One of the key OW things you'll have to deal with if you are heading to europe is the BA/AA transatlantic issue (although that might go away).

Thanks, been with DL forever but if they keep creeping up the award levels, then there's no point accumulating with them any more.

OW does seem pretty limited compared to the other two.

I second that one!!!