Interesting question and it's something that requires some thought to come up with a definitive strategy. What you should be looking at is historically where you have travelled and where you plan on travelling in the future and what your needs are when you travel. How important are lounges? Do you ever check-in several bags? What about seating, do you mind being seated at the back or do you want an up front seat in coach? How often do you travel on airlines like Air Canada, United, Singapore and others that Virgin partners with to provide reciprocal benefits? This should give you a rough sense of what airlines to get frequent flyer status with and at what level of status.
To give you an example of where I place value in frequent flyer programs, let's consider the airline I spent most of my flying with last year: Qantas. For me holding QF Gold status the number one benefit was having access to those lounges when travelling on QF/JQ throughout Australia as it generally meant at a minimum a meal for myself and the ability to get some work done before getting on the flight. In addition, the status also allowed me to select better seats than no status QF Bronze or even Silver members on the plane (for me that'd be row 4 in coach or row 1 in Business). Then there were benefits I'm sure I used but which I didn't value a whole lot like priority check in, security and boarding or the ability to access QF Classic award seats a couple extra days out. Lastly, there were advertised benefits I never used like extra baggage allowance. If I were to place a value on that I'd say maybe $1,000 considering I'd have to spend $700 for QF Club membership and suppose $15 on each QF flight I took to select the better seat (conservative measure). Well I took 20 QF flights last year so that would've cost me $300 right there. To earn that QF status I enjoyed last year required me completing a status match in 2021 which was achieved from a $778 economy saver fare between SYD and DRW during a DSC promotion which netted me the 100 status credits needed to complete the challenge. So in that regard I came out ahead with QF. Luggage is where you can really come out ahead, though. I've used my status with United airlines to ship 3 bags weighing 32 kg each to the UK, Canada and now Australia for free which if you look at the extra baggage costs would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.
There is no one right frequent flyer program to hold status with by the way. It's really going to depend on your travel needs, the cost to acquire the status and the benefits (real or perceived). So whilst QF Gold works quite well for me it may not for you. You should regularly re-evaluate your travel needs to determine what status makes sense. For me travelling from 2017-2020, having United Premier Gold sense really made a lot of sense as they were the airline that often had the cheapest fare, their status was trivial to acquire (at the time) and the benefits were outsized. Well now that I'm largely in Australia, United no longer makes much sense so I transitioned over to Qantas for the time being. In some cases it may make sense to diversify your status with several frequent flyer programs, holding mid-tier status in each as opposed to holding top tier status with just one airline. For instance, Qantas Gold is not a bad status to hold since you get things like lounge access, priority everything and upfront seating at T-80 and have similar benefits with OneWorld partners like American and BA. You could then earn Virgin Gold status and have similar benefits with them and their partners.
Anyways I hope this rant gave you some perspective on the whole airline status game. Like anything travel related these days it requires some thought and strategy if you really want to optimize your experience!
-RooFlyer88
