mridley2

I think your decision boils down to a few key areas to think about.

Customer Service: Delta is the best. Period. Friendly, helpful, polite agents will do everything they can to make your trip as comfortable as possible. And if you do stumble upon the occasional grumpy or unhelpful agent with DL, speak with a different agent (gate, phone, flight) and they will likely help you get what you need/want.

Award Travel: Delta has fewer low level awards, less ability to book awards on partners and a horrible web site especially when trying to book using the award calendar. DL will usually ask for 200k+ miles for a regular/frequent US/EU rt flight. This is very common.

Upgrades: On Delta, you will get very few upgrades unless you're a Diamond level on an expensive coach fare. So plan to fly in Economy unless you purchase F. Economy Comfort will be the best you can hope for unless traveling off peak days/times. As PM or DM you can select econ comfort for free at booking. GM's can pay for Y+ or select it free at T-72 hours. But if you're booking your flights less than 10 days in advance, all those seats will be taken except the occasional middle Y+ seat.

SuperG1955

My wife and I switched from CO when the UA deal was announced. We were very happy with CO and are very happy with DL where we are also PM's. We have friends who've stayed with UA and are satisfied - they haven't had the scheduling and other problems that many folks seem to have.

For you - DL does both HOU-ATL and IAH- ATL, mostly mainline with a few CRJ-900's from IAH. The trip is under 2 hours block time and under 700 miles which means snack baskets, not meals, in F. You WILL see bananas..

DL is upgrading a lot of the low end mainline and high end RJ fleet with power in expanded C+ so that means a lot of uncertainty and a variety of AC on the route for the next 1 - 2 years.

3 to 4 RT a month at about 1550 per trip equates to between 50K and 74K annually which is Gold Medallion (GM). GM has been particularly hard hit in terms of meaningful benefits, especially C+ at booking and you'd probably have to do a MQM MR to insure being and maintaining PM.

I'm not certain which benefits are there with Challenges nowadays but getting to PM would seem to be a priority and tough to do with short trips and minimum segments. Once you get there, and it may take a year, you should be OK.

akcae

Another advantage of switching to DL will be that you'll get a preview of any future UA MP changes with SkyMiles first, before UA copies it.

Sez_Who

Good points for the OP and here's another one...

DL has rollover MQM's, UA does not offer rollover PQM's. While the OP would be forever Gold with UA, it would mean that at least once every few years the OP would be Plat with DL. Of course both require the min spend or waiver.

ND76

If the OP makes 50 round-trips, he'll have 100 MQS, which will get him into PM status (assuming he does the minimum spend of $9k MQDs or $25,000 of charges on a Delta AMEX card).

Ysitincoach

I was former CO plat, and didn't like the merger with UA. I saw my hub adapt the UA attitude quickly, and service deteriorated at a rapid pace.

Made the switch to DL, and there's been pluses and minuses like anything in life.

On the plus side, I like that DL has done a great job at trying to eliminate 50-seat regional jets, and bring things like WiFi to the market very quickly.

On the minus side, their WiFi connection is lackluster, and their a/c tend to be on the older side. There's like 19 different versions of the 757 cabin on DL, and the version they're all downgrading to quite frankly sucks.

CO had the best apps and website for the user, and UA had the best computer system background to enable agents for things like irregular ops. Gone is the UA computer, and the CO apps have evolved.

If you come from the CO world, don't expect the DL apps or website to ever work at a level that's acceptable. DL's apps lack simple features like seat maps for any flight, upgrade and standby lists for any flight, and online products and services that work on a consistent basis.

My upgrade percentage is extremely high on DL--it was dwindling at CO/UA.

Award redemption is abysmal at DL, and international partners simply don't compare to UA's Star Alliance. It's so bad that I don't even fly international on DL, and instead use EK for cash purchases, and LH for my leftover CO/UA awards.

I've advised several co-workers of my move to DL, some tried it, and didn't like it. DL is not for everyone...then again, neither is UA.

Bowgie

Boiling it down to the "Cliff's Notes" summary:

Airline-----Flight ops-----FF program
DL---------good------------sucky
UA---------sucky-----------sucky

anon2k2

I flew UA for years, and living in SFO it was convenient. My near weekly SFO-JFK trips were a no brainer for corporate travel to book on UA. They were starting to get pretty bad, with United Shuttle and TED being examples of the silliness. I had five or six pretty horrific experiences in a row on UAL before I switched jobs.

When I left that company and moved to SEA, I did mainly west coast and AS was the de facto choice. I still love AS, but as DL has added more and more flights from SEA, I've flown them more in the last couple of years.

Last week I flew 4 segments on UAL for the first time in 5 years, and every single one of them was a cluster. My SEA-ORD was cancelled, forcing a reroute through IAH, and I lost my full fare F seat. My regional to BNA had me in a seat with a burned out reading light and a seatback that wouldn't lock upright. My return from BNA-SEA included a delay into DEN and a delay into SEA.

Overall based on the last 20 years, I'll choose DL over UA anytime.

SuperG1955

Correct, but since he said 3 to 4 a month, he'll end up with less than 50 unless he either does som segment run(s) or some weird routings for his HOU/IAH-ATL.

I didn't figure on a lot of rollover accumulating for him but did think he'd realize that PM is critical to his travel needs and worth the MQM MR(s).

LaserSailor

I fly UA /DL about 2:1 based on direct flight availability, on a weekly basis. My hub is complicated a bit as I work out two separate offices and fly from both, east coast based. Total segments last year on both was 212

I found operations to be the same, last year I miss connected 5 segments. I do cancel travel in Winter storms generally.

I find crew and equipment to be the same, with a nod to DL to having the nicer regional on the longer legs.
I don't get the "crew is nicer to me stuff at all, they are both pleasant and pro from TA to flight crew.

I neither eat nor drink plane food so I have no value to add there.

If you seek bitterness you will find it.

Watchful

I would disagree a bit at this point - because upgrades start happening which often frees up some great Economy Comfort seats. Even if the flight is quite full, I have had good luck (as a Gold and even as a Silver) in snagging good last minute Economy Comfort seats. With the increasing rarity of upgrades to First, the EC is a great benefit.

kenn0223

I switched this year primarily because UA's reliability (on-time & IRROPS recovery) was horrible. DL is far better.

I was Global Services when I left UA and I would rate DL's customer service level to general members equal or better than that of UA to its GS members. I've racked up about 100k on DL so far and should hit DM sometime next month.

So far, the only two things I've seen that DL does match or exceed UA on is 1) mileage redemption but I suspect that will be in UA's cost-cutting sights before too soon and 2) I prefer the pmUA business class seat (even though its not all direct aisle access) as I've found the DL seat to be a bit cramped. I've only been on the DL A330s and 747s so far and I've heard the 767s and 777s are better.

I left NW/DL during the CF during the merger when pmUA was the leader in on-time. I am pretty sure I will switch away from DL at some point again but for now I am much happier with the only regret being that I didn't bail on UA a few years ago.

Bonehead

Lol

NotHamSarnie

As the only actual food option versus all the packaged muck, I really like the banana! I hope all the banana-hating going on in this thread doesn't result in their being removed as an option!

youngdlplat

I made the switch from DL to UA when I moved to Houston. I've found the differences to be minimal. I think the flight experience, on average, was a bit better on DL. The cabins on DL on average are nicer (though not always). DL's alcohol options are better overall (though not by too much). I like that DL has free snacks in Y, and DL's buy-on-board food is better in my opinion. But these things are all pretty minor. I've been reasonably happy with UA's service. I do find the UA website to be better. I find UA's rewards program to be a bit more rewarding too.

UA still gives E+ to Gold members for free at booking, which is a real difference. Also, UA has a lot more E+ seats on the average plane than DL has EC, so you can be more certain to get the better economy seat. On the other hand, EC on DL gets free drinks, which E+ does not (I hope UA might follow DL's lead there, but I'm not hoping too much.) DL has larger FC cabins, so FC upgrades I think are more likely on DL.

All in all, I think DL is definitely doing better than UA these days. Morale is higher and the service is better. But I haven't found the differences to be that great. Thus, being Houston based, the directs out of IAH make UA the clear choice for now. But YMMV.