Thank you everyone for your responses, clearly I have a LOT to learn!

This is complete duplicate of longer thread available here.

Moderators, can you merge and close this one?

Mwenenzi, Thank you!!!!

Thanks to you, I signed up for Air India's FFP. They'll give me 100% for TA's flight (TA will only give me 25% of bm for the same flights!) and is willing to give me pretty much the same or better than UA, AND doesn't have a PQD requirement!

Safe travels!!

I have done a RBP for duplicate thread in the information desk forum. That thread seems to have gone

While opening an account with many programs might seem like a solution, it has a number of pitfalls. Especially for the flyer does not fly very, very frequently -- say less than 100,000 miles annually.
-- Generally the programs are stand alone -- in most cases, you can not transfer miles from one program to another. To redeem you need a significant chunk of miles in one program to do anything useful. Without this critical mass, you have orphan miles, miles of little value.
-- The problem with only occasional crediting to a given program, you take a high risk of miles/points expiration.
-- Most program give their elites better opportunities to use miles (better inventory) which the flyer crediting multiple programs will not have access to.

Spreading yourself thin between many programs, will dilute the benefits you will receive.

And AIs BURN rate may be very high... I have no idea but its important info if you think the EARN rate is the be all and end all.....
EARNING 4x more miles will not be much use if you need 4x more to redeem....

yeah... I don't want to spread myself too thin either. But AI will give me better returns on my flights. I would be at silver status right now ,if I used AI's ffp, instead of 6k with UA

I digress. thank you very much for the replies. AI is the only SA member that will give me miles (http://www.wheretocredit.com/turkish-airlines/u) and for that info, I am very very grateful!