MilesBuzz! - Am I better off?

Travel for my job picked up in the last year and I now have silver elite status on two different airlines (Continental and Northwest).

I am wondering: this year, am I better off to discontinue my FF account on one of these airlines since they're part of the same alliance and try to earn gold or platinum status on one carrier, instead of silver on two carriers? I fly about 80K a year (mostly on those two airlines though occasionally on JetBlue). Are there any downsides to doing this?

Sorry if this is a silly question to the experts -- I'm sort of new to all of this :) Any advice is much appreciated!

Travel for my job picked up in the last year and I now have silver elite status on two different airlines (Continental and Northwest).

I am wondering: this year, am I better off to discontinue my FF account on one of these airlines since they're part of the same alliance and try to earn gold or platinum status on one carrier, instead of silver on two carriers? I fly about 80K a year (mostly on those two airlines though occasionally on JetBlue). Are there any downsides to doing this?

Sorry if this is a silly question to the experts -- I'm sort of new to all of this :) Any advice is much appreciated!

Anecdotally speaking ('cause I rarely fly CO or DL, nee NW), my impression is you'd be best served by CO GLD status. That, of course, depends on where you're based and where you fly to most.

Recommend you go to the CO and DL forums and wiki pages and read up on their respective programs. Then ask for any clarification (remember...READ and SEARCH first, THEN ask! ;) )

Welcome to FT!

discontinue my FF account on one of these airlines since they're part of the same alliance

I'm not an expert on which airline has better elite status, however, Continental has announced that at some date, it plans to leave the SkyTeam alliance and join the Star Alliance (United and US Air). Don't know when that is to occur. So you might want to keep your elite status on both since at some date, they will be in 2 different alliances.

CO is a nicer airline. NW in going into it's merger with DL, has really axed a lot of the higher level perks. I'd read each FF forum (NW/DL and CO), and see which one seems to work the best for you. Having both NW and CO is definitely not a good idea. Much better to have mid level Gold status.

Thanks for all the great responses! I'll do some more research and figure out which one works best for me. The NWA/Delta merger is a bit of a curveball (I agree that CO is in general a better airline, but Delta and NWA are a little more convenient for me...)

Welcome to FlyerTalk!!

You can expect that later this year CO - probably late Q3 or in Q4 - will no longer be a NW partner. I don't really like the DL SkyMiles program at all, but if that is what is convenient for you, there is likely value in that. I do feel that you'd be better served at your travel levels focusing on a single program rather than splitting the credits, but I can't make the decision for you on which one that should be.

I do agree with the idea of focusing most of your mileage accrual on one carrier, but don't "discontinue" your FF account on the other, either. You never know when those miles or that account will come in handy. I accrue the bulk of my miles on BA (and am Gold as a result), but I still use my accounts at DL, UA, AA, etc. on a regular basis. My frequent international travel often ends up being on a random assortment of overseas carriers that might belong to any of the big alliances, so I end up racking up miles in my smaller accounts too. Between the earned miles and transfers from CC accounts etc., I've gotten an awful lot of award trips out of them.