I’ve rummaged around a bit and tried a bunch of searches but can’t find what I’m looking for. 4 years ago, I left Canada and moved to Italy. My closest big international airport is FCO (lucky me, it’s a great airport.) I’ve been burning down my Aeroplan points but wondering if for ongoing accumulation I should change *A programs. I’d likely pick Turkish Miles & Smiles as FCO-IST is my new favorite routing to anywhere.

I’m retired, so no longer have any status. Couple cross-Atlantic flights a year and some European travel. I usually fly business, either on points or on the less-flexible business fares as I plan way ahead. Remaining AC balance is 110K. I can use the rest of those to get my daughter back and forth from Canada for vacations. But what should I do with new flights?

Given my currently limited flight habits, is it a good or a bad idea to switch programs? Aeroplan always wants to route me through Canada for my trans-Atlantic flights to the U.S. and it’s making me nuts. I will in fact go out of my way to fly on Turkish Airlines and change in IST instead of YYZ. So do I start from zero with TK? Or stick with AC? Thoughts appreciated.

AP status has a spend requirement, either on AC metal or booked via AC (114 ticket) so if you're not doing either one of those, you'll earn points but not (meaningful) status.

If you don't care about status and just want to accrue redeemable points then you can book via any *A carrier's website and you should look at which program gets your the most points based on your flying and which program has the best redemption opportunities that suit your travel.

If you primarily fly TK in biz, look at the TK earning page or https://www.wheretocredit.com/turkish-airlines/j to see how those flights will accrue redeemable miles in the various programs.

Very useful and new-to-me research tool, thanks

If you fly TK often enough, that can be a good option and using the UG certificates that come with that. Aegean can work as well with FCO, assuming you can get a few A3 segments in there.

You do not need to credit to the same ffp as the airline you fly. That is what alliance and ff partners are about.
Could fly TK FCO-IST-USA and credit to Aeroplan. But need to check the earning for ff miles and status.

This is what I've been doing to date. But Aeroplan awards make it difficult to get on non-AC metal. As far as I can tell, you have to call, there's no way to book TK or others online. And looking at the search tool, it appears I could also be boosting miles credits on other airlines. I think Aeroplan is not serving me well from here and want to switch to a different *A airline but wasn't sure if there are other gotchas with airlines I haven't used often. It sounds like it's not a bad idea to switch, based on comments so far.

I flew them for about 4 segments last year, and credited the miles to Aeroplan. I'll have a closer look, thanks.