Best Skyteam FFP for getting lounge access?
 

Does anyone have any advice on which Skyteam FFP is best in terms of quickly getting to STE+ and getting lounge access? I don't really get much vacation time with my job now so flight redemption isn't so important to me.

At first I thought Flying Blue would be good since the threshold for STE+ is only 40,000 miles, but there website states that I will have to earn these miles by Dec. 31, which I'm not sure that I can do.

Now, I'm looking at Aeromexico's Club Premier which you need about 50,000 miles and should give you one year, however their website states that I only have until July 31 to earn these miles and I just sign up on July 7. I'm wondering if this is some kind of mistake though.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Either MU or CZ (or both) give access to their own lounges to their own SkyTeam Elites (silver equivalent level), so in a sense this answers the question you're asking.

More generally, any partner other than DL will have the same lounge policy for ElitePlus. So are you just asking which carrier requires the fewest status miles for Gold or equivalent? If so, you're ignoring that fact that status miles are easier to earn on some partners than others. [For example, think about fares that earn zero on some SkyTeam FF programs but nontrivial numbers of status miles on other partners.]

Thanks for the info, I suppose in that case, generally what are some FFPs that are easier to earn miles on?

I'm based in Taiwan and it looks like I'll be doing some business in Mexico, so I thought maybe China Airlines or Aeromexico would be the way to go since they both seem to give 100% miles to each others flights for most classes. However, for some reason Aeromexico says I only have until the end of this month to get to the next level.

I'd try China airlines, but their FFP website looks pretty crappy and doesn't seem to offer as many options to earn miles outside of flying. Also they require more miles to advance, although they give you 2 years to do it.

Look at credit cards as well. I live in Japan and AMEX here offers one card that gives instant Gold on DL (Elite Plus), only about a US$300 fee. We also have similar cards for continuously renewing status on NH and JL albeit with those programs you do actually have to earn it once normally to qualify for the card, then keep the status regardless of flying as long as you keep paying the annual fee.

China Eastern just revamped their FFP, I believe to be more in line with the rest of Skyteam. Members are complaining that this will flood the market with elites.

Basically it's now 80k kilometers or 40 segments to achieve top status, which is relatively easy to do compared with before. Before it required 180k km or 100 segments within two years.

Edited to add: I hope a new top tier with real benefits such as free domestic (China) upgrades gets implemented soon.