I've been musing about diversifying from Qantas status since reaching lifetime gold (OWS) status. I have other memberships, mainly for award redemption opportunities and parking miles earned from non-OW flights, but with a possible view to earning status. Discussions in the AS/AA OWE thread sharpened and refined my thoughts. In the middle of that, an Australian points site posted an article about an SAS status match open to QF and VA members. It offered Diamond match from QF/VA platinum for €349, Gold for less.
Many status match offers (including some for AF/KLM FB) have excluded Australian residents, and this one came with no flight activity requirement, so I took it. The process was simple and it cleared in a few hours today. I'm not asking for retrospective endorsement of my decision, I'm happy with it and it's done anyway, but I'm interested in thoughts about where to from here. I haven't travelled SkyTeam in ages, but there have been fares that tempted me. This one is for this membership year and the following one, and since I joined yesterday that's two years, so I have plenty of time to extract value from it. I'm aware there is a non-zero probability that the programme will be merged with FlyingBlue, but I don't expect it and am not counting on it.
I'm likely to focus my OW travel on the QF FF now rather than seek AA or AS status, but my choice of airlines will likely be more diverse, including Star Alliance, although I doubt I will be able to earn status there (although possibly leverage VA status for limited *Alliance benefits - and SAS status offers SQ Silver Kris access).