MilesBuzz! - Who would you choose for your US FF airline in 2009...

Having already wrapped up requalify for 2009, who would you use for your primary airline, if you could pick any in:

Alaska
Continental
Delta/NW
United
American

Please factor in the recent devaluations. As a DL Gold/NW Plat, I'm having to reevaluate who my money goes to as a result of the above...

Although Alaska has affiliations with many other airlines, the airline itself doesn't serve my home city at all. I would be de facto DL due to sheer flight frequencies compared to the others listed, but that's a variable that depends upon location . . .

i would personally pick continental or united, just because AA doesn't fly out of the airport here in lansing, but those two do.

1) Ua
2) As
3) Aa
4) Dl
5) Co
6) Nw
...
200) Us

I would vote for American. I have found them to have the best award availability.

UA would be for me.

American for me wins - despite the fact that I will have to fly our of BOS instead of PVD - they seem to have the best award availability for home Africa with BA (well Nairobi at least)...

A fairly valueless question. So much depends on where you fly from and to, what fare buckets you typically by and so forth.

UA. Best route structure for us by far.

Southwest. Quite simply, every other Domestic carrier has now dropped below the level of useability. They have all de-valued their FF programs to the point that it is no longer worthwhile to make a purchase decision on the basis of these programs.

I am very happy that, over the past couple of years, rather than buy any tickets for personal travel, I have burned the ~400K of miles that I had accrued with AA, CO, DL, and UA on free trips, and now have only about 35K with AA, remaining.

So, for my domestic flight needs, I will now be buying strictly on the basis of fares and schedule, and whether or not I can check a bag for free, or have a soft drink for free. And that leaves Southwest as the winner - as they remain the last competent vendor standing for providing reasonably convenient, economical, and reliable service to the majority of the domestic destinations that I fly.

I still have my Asia Miles, and I still will use Cathay as my preferred vendor for trans-pacific travel. But I'm through with the major Domestic carriers, in particular, DL, AA, and UA, who I have now largely divorced myself from as a customer.

For me it is UA. Most of my flying is to Asia and they have a good route structure there plus star alliance airlines such as Thai, ANA, Singapore, etc.

AA with AAdvantage. I'm mainly interested in upgrading from paid coach but scoring cheap upgrades on domestic US flights is nice as well.

At what point does this discussion become purely a subjective matter? Sure, there are some fundamental differences, but I think it really comes down to your "home" airport, and then what you want out of your program - free seats or upgrades. I'm an avid Coke fan, but f somebody could show me that Pepsi had significantly less calories and less cost, I'd quickly become a Pepsi aficianado. I'm not talking the difference between Coke and Diet Pepsi, but apples to apples, so to speak.

All things are not equal in the FF program world, but each person has their own set of variables to consider.