Regarding alliances, my experience has been that it is easier to get award tickets with the FF program of non-US airlines than it is with US airlines. Recently I tried to book round trip tickets PHL-BOM using miles. No way said Delta. Managed to get pretty much the dates I wanted on Air France. Within an alliance, I would seriously consider accumulating the miles on a non-US airline.

If you will be flying on delta/continental, go with Continental, and fly continental (does CO fly EWR-BOM?).

If you are flying business class, I recommend you go with UA, and fly LH from DEN-FRA-BOM.

Look at the redemption tables for the airlines you want to fly. If you wish to burn your miles within Asia, I'd stick with Skyteam. However, If you want to go to other continents, *A might be a good option.

Yeah, they just started that route recently.

= I do not think Star and Sky has similar coverage in Asia or Latin America. Star is FAR FAR superior in Asia, while Sky has a slight edge in Latin America - though, depending on the program (UAL/DL), you might be able to chose additional Lat Am partners. Sky is super weak in Australia, but with KQ, provides a better reach in Africa then going via JNB on SA and then backtracking back.

Cheers,
A.

From US-Asia, I don't know if I would say FAR FAR superior. NW offers a lot of trans-pacific options and has a Tokyo hub, while KE and China Southern can get you to many more smaller cities.

Good point about Africa. Also, DL now has service (or is soon to be expanding) to DKR, JNB, ACC, CAI, and LOS. Definite edge on that continent for Skyteam.

I think for flights to India from the US Star Alliance is the right choice. So I would say go for United and try to fly with LH or LX to India. Also there are talks that Air India will join Star Alliance.

Having flown several times Denver to India I really like UA/LH combination as well. Either through FRA or MUC works as LH has expanded their flights from MUC to India as Munich is a big tech town and does a lot of tech exchange with India.

I do find that AA/CO/DL have better fares sometimes, UA is always competitive.

Sometimes going the Asia way on Star Alliance can work as well. A good friend of mine here in Denver does that regularly gaining more miles but it does take longer.

The 50% miles on CO/DL don't appeal to me at all.

One other suggestion, if you like to stick with StarAlliance, may be you should consider other members like TG to accumulate miles. Reason being, you will be able have lounge access after getting 50k miles (*G) in that program and it will last for 2 years. If you use United or US to accumulate, there will be no lounge access if you are not flying international. Since you are planning for more than 10 trips (10x18k=180k miles), I would suggest getting the first 50k on TG and spreading the balance on UA to accumulate to their elite level of 1k so you can get 6 free System Wide Upgrades (SWU).

OTOH if you are not interested in domestic (US) lounge access, the best would be for UA, as after the initial 25k, you will get 25% bonus miles (only for UA metal) and after the first 50k you will get 100% bonus miles on all UA flights. That is a lot of miles even if you take UA from DEN-FRA or DEN-MUC.

Happy flying, and welcome to FT

A lot of sense in the above. With that many miles, you should definitely consider getting status on a couple of airlines. Some people choose their airline and routing primarily with the criterion of minimizing total travel time. Others are willing to spend a longer time enroute if they can get upgraded. Lounge access is a significant matter. The way I play the game, I'm willing to fly a longer route if I can score upgrades with some kind of regularity. I suppose redemption of miles can be a significant thing. UA is known to require a bit more lead time than AA, but I've never had enormous difficulty redeeming miles, especially with the Star Alliance giving many more options.

If you are going as often as monthly, you are going to be within easy range of attaining 1K status on UA, which will give you six SWUs. Use them to BKK or SIN and take SQ or TG from there. You earn EQMs the entire way and have a shot at decent lounge life. You have to overnight going west, but it's a quick connection going east. I've done the FRA routing, and it's okay. But unless you are buying your way into C class on the LH flights, it can be a tough upgrade even if you have access to numerous SWUs.

Just noticed a press release dated Dec 13 that AI is now part of Star Alliance