mulasien

New guy here, did some searching around and got some info, but looking for confirmation. If this is a misplaced question, feel free to let me know:

Just started a new job that will entail lots of flying within the US. This is my first travelling position like this, so I'm learning as I go.

I had originally gone with Delta, with just over 2000 miles credited from one trip, and another I'm taking next week. However I'm hearing a ton of bad reviews of their program, especially in getting upgrades and mileage booked tickets.

I live and fly out of Kansas City, and fly to pretty much all points domestically. My primary goals are to be able to easily book award tickets for me and my wife either within the US, or maybe the Caribbean/Hawaii someday. I would also like to be able to get seat upgrades for my business flights once in a while as well.

In reading around, I'm hearing that United has an overall better frequent flyer program, and wondering if I should switch to them before I become too invested with one airline (I'll lose out on about 4000 Delta miles after next week's trip, but that's better than 100k).

Also, I just recently got approved for an AMEX Starwoods CC, which I plan on using for hotel points and converting to miles on the airline of my choice.

I'm new to the FT lingo, so please try to go easy on all the acronyms if you don't mind, as they're still mostly jibberish to me.

Anyone got any recommendations based on my criteria? Thanks.

MR_MAMA

All the programs have plus and minuses to them. I am a delta DM and overall am very happy. Get upgrade 100% of the time on domestic flights and gave no problem redeeming my miles to where I want to go for low award dates (including international business). Once you learn the rules of any program you just learn to work around what you can to your advantage.

That being said, I personally tried UA and right now for me is just a mass cluster over there and decided to wear until the merger dust settles and they work their issues out.

AA flyers seem to be pretty happy with their program and they were voted top program last year.
You need to look at which program has the best travel schedule for you of you are going to be flying weekly.

sonofzeus

Get a cashback CC. Book the flights that work for your time/budget constraints.

Bttc

At this point, I think AA fliers are getting the best deal--ever since United started offering cheap kiosk upgrades to non-elites, a lot of UA folk have been unable to get upgrades. Delta's rollover for EQM is nice, but their RDM are a lot less valuable than the other programs.

redtop43

Your principal objective should be to achive elite status on one or more airlines. You will get silver elite at 25K miles traveled, gold elite at 50K, and higher status for more miles, up to maybe 125K. You have to know how much you will be traveling and try to assess the benefits of making, say, platinum on one airline vs. gold on two or silver on three.

You should look at the schedules for the places you will be traveling to - status isn't much of a benefit if you are spending 7 hours to get home from Denver instead of flying nonstop. Also find out your company's policies. If they require you to take the cheapest flight, you may have limited flexibility.

If you get elite status, you will get automatic space-available upgrades on domestic flights. I'm not sure that all airlines give that to silvers - you'd have to check the program rules. These upgrades don't cost you anything. They go to the highest elites first, and then work their way down. You might not get upgraded as a diamond elite on a flight from LAX to ATL on a Friday afternoon, but you might get upgraded as a silver on the same flight on a Saturday-night redeye. I've often been upgraded as a silver to and from Vegas.

Another nice benefit is free same-day changes, you should check what is required on each airline for that. Also, elites get bonus miles; you might get anywhere from a 25% to 100% bonus on miles actually flown.

Delta does indeed have a very bad reputation for award availability for the standard mileage levels, and independent studies show the reputation to be well-deserved.

You should get a credit card or cards to augment your strategy. Starwood Guest is a good card in that it can transfer to a wide variety of airlines (but only at a 50% ratio to United), and has a 25% bonus, but it does not provide any advantages on any particular airline. Airline-specific cards will usually give you things like priority boarding and free bag check. The more interesting benefits are additional elite qualifying miles. I know the Delta Platinum and Reserve cards, and the USAir Mastercard, give 10-15K elite qualifying miles if you spend a certain amount. Some cards also give lounge access. If you are traveling this much, perhaps your employer will pay the fee for something like the Delta Reserve, United Club, or American Express Platinum cards, with fees in the $400 range but that give lounge access. You should assess whether the you will spend enough to make the threshold, and whether the extra elite qualifying miles will be worthwhile.

There is no magic formula for knowing what level of status you need on any given airline to get upgrades. I can say that in general, if you could fly for an equal cost and amount of time to all destinations, you would prefer to do it all on one airline rather than many, unless you are flying so much that you can make a high elite status on more than one airline. If you are flying enough, you can reasonably hope for upgrades on business flights more than "once in a while." Usually the first class cabin is mostly filled with elites on free upgrades.

One thing you might try is to log into the sites for Delta, United, American and USAir and try booking award tickets for trips you might take. Do a reasonable enough sample to get an idea of availability.

In general, all the airlines have their problems and issues. United is perhaps a bit more troubled right now because the kinks of the merger with Continental are not fully resolved. American is in bankruptcy, but through all the bankruptcies and mergers, frequent fliers have rarely lost significant value. (I think the Pan Am dissolution might have taken down some accounts.)

Decisions are not forever. Once you make elite on an airline, you naturally want to fly that airline because you get the elite perks. Switching loyalty to a new carrier requires you to give up those perks until you make elite again. However, most carriers will do a "Status Match and Challenge." If you are gold on Delta, United may well say "Prove to us you are gold on Delta, and we will make you gold on United right away for 3 months, and if you fly a certain amount on United in those three months we will give you status as though you qualified for gold for the entire year."

Hope this all helps.

taliesin

I don't have an especially strong view on this question, although FWIW I fly AA, largely for reasons others have already mentioned (low value of Delta RDMs, post-merger problems at UA).

I do want to say, though, if you're looking to convert your SPG points to miles, UA is not a good choice, since SPG points convert to Delta or AA 1:1 (plus the 25% bonus if you convert 20k), but only 1:2 to UA, making it a waste of Starpoints IMO. If you want United miles Chase Sapphire Preferred is probably the first card you should get.

Thunderroad

Welcome to FT!

Lots of good advice here. As already noted, you definitely want to take account of which airline has the best connections for you, flying to and from Kansas City.

That being said, if AA adequately suits your purposes and its connections are equal to or even a bit worse than UA, US or DL, I'd definitely recommend AA. By far the best frequent flyer program right now in terms of the combination of getting upgrades once you get status and being able to redeem miles.

In contrast, it generally takes a lot more miles for an award trip on DL, compared to its competitors. And UA is a sinking ship in terms of its customer service, inability to deal with mechanical and weather delays/cancellations (a factor that will become quite salient to you if you travel enough) and deteriorating frequent flyer program. Lots of formerly loyal UA flyers are jumping over to AA or other carriers these days.

True, AA is in bankruptcy. But it will emerge within the coming year and, as noted, airline bankruptcies are not that unusual and rarely if ever result in people losing their miles and perks. It's true that AA's frequent flyer program could deteriorate somewhat in coming years (though I'd bet against severe deterioration along the lines of what DL and UA have done), but that's a given for all carriers and is a near-certainty for UA.

JerryFF

If you are primarily interested in flying coach, then this suggestion is a good one. However, if you want reward yourself with business or first class tickets, then I do not think this is as good a collecting miles. My reason for thinking this way is that, in general, a business or first class ticket usually requires twice the miles as a coach ticket but often cost 4-5x as much or more in $$. There are certainly exceptions to this rule of thumb, but in general I do think it holds true, at least for the situations I have been interested in.

mulasien

Thanks for the replies so far, all.

Perhaps it would help if I went into more detail with what I want to do with my miles:

When I have a trip coming up (usually lasts less than a week), I want to be able to occasionally bring my wife along using miles so she can have a mini-vacation while I'm working during the day, and we can see the sights at night. This would be in addition to an additional vacation for the two of us. I should never have to be concerned about one-way rewards vs. round trip, so that's a non-issue for me.

To address a few points brought up:
1. Based on estimated yearly travel I'll be doing (about 30% of the year), I'll be lucky to make the first tier of elite status, unless it's cumulative over the years. Low level awards are of great appeal to me, at least for now. I'm also quite fine with cheap kiosk upgrades for lowbies, since that is what I'll be for a while .

2. I just now went on both United's and Delta's website to see how easy it is to book an award ticket. Holy cow Delta's website does indeed suck. The overview shows a low level award available, however when you actually look at flights on that date, only mid to high level mileage prices are available. United seems to actually have the awards available that they say they do. This is going to be a big point for me. I would like to be able to occasionally have my wife go on me on a trip using miles to pay for her ticket (my stays will never be more than a week) and Delta's booking system appears to be completely broken.

3. Good point on the 1:2 ratio of converting Starwood points to United. If that were the case and I went United, I'd just save them up for hotel stays when we go on an actual vacation. The high level cards (i.e. Delta Reserve) are not in consideration at this time.

4. Didn't ask why, but I've had several coworkers and family members who travel a lot warn me not to go with AA. Didn't ask for details, but it seems to be a trend with those I ask, so I didn't consider them in my original inquiry. How are they compared to the other two? I might have to check them out.

5. We actually have a cash back card now, the AMEX Blue Preferred. However we don't get as much use out of it as we can as we do our grocery shopping at the local Wal-Mart, which doesn't get the 6% cash back on groceries, leaving us with minimal awards from the 3% back on gas, and 1% everything else. I'd like to get more travel-based rewards, which the SPG one appears to be a good fit for.

6. The airline specific cards aren't as valuable to me because: 1. a carry-on is usually sufficient for me, 2. Any check bag fees will be reimbursed to me by my workplace, so it's a moot-point and 3. Don't want my credit card to be saddled to one airline, especially if it's not a good one for booking rewards (i.e., Delta from what I'm reading).

clacko

you will 25-30k mi per calendar year?

then, you may want to buy your ticket on vacations w/companion on the award...

i would try to get status on some carrier...if you think you will be close this year, maybe a mr in early dec would be in order....

if you plan to do an europe trip & have selected aa, you might want to consider a gold or plt challenge.....ua may have something similar...

edit to add....25k mi gets your wife one ticket.....perhaps you both should get a mi card w/sign up bonus on either ua or aa....you can cancel before the fee is due at renewal....

when she go on a work trip w/you, no extra charge on the hotel [other than food]?

i would also look at the value of hotel pts vs air....

redtop43

Your note about level of travel changes things somewhat. If you were traveling, say, 100K miles a year, with a 2x bonus for status, you would be getting enough miles for 8 domestic round-trips a year. Your drawback would be that when taking your wife along, there's a good chance you'd get upgraded and she wouldn't (but you can always offer to switch seats - in other words, you won't be sitting together, but giving her the F seat is good for marital harmony!)

If you will only be flying 25K miles, though, you're only going to get enough points for one ticket a year. Obviously, you should use those points for a trip that you want to take but would otherwise be more expensive than the others. However, at this point, leveraging credit card signup bonuses can be useful. If you use the right signup links, you can get 100K miles on American, 50K on United, 30K on DL, and 40K on US. If you each get all these cards, you that's potentially enough for about 18 tickets. If you want to travel together, you'll have to find flights you want to take for business that also have award space, and you might have to fly on your non-preferred airlines.

I'd also suggest you look into Priceline for hotels. (See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onlin...ng-primer.html). Unfortunately, your employer is not likely to give you a medal for getting $150 rooms for $60. But you might be able to have a discussion with your boss where you have more than the usual number of $40 dinners (i.e. you and your wife) even as your hotel expenses come in quite low.

This is also a case where a card providing EQM's (Elite Qualifying Miles) might be helpful. But it depends what airline you are on and whether it will help you make a certain level of elite.

clacko

adding to my post above.....

w/no status on aa, booking an award w/i 21 days can add $75 to the ticket....might be a consideration for you at 1 week.....look on aa.com for the details....

do the what if detail on any vacation this year.....are hotel pts better than air pts?

what would it have done last year?

edit to add...$25k on a 1% cash back is $250.....are your work tickets $250 or less?

toomanybooks

Since you have clarified that you won't probably be going for 50-100K seat miles in a year, and want to take your wife along on trips, I recommend you take a look at the Southwest program.

No first class on Southwest, but you won't be getting many FC upgrades anyway at that level of flying.

If you accumulate 110K Southwest points in a calendar year, you get a great extra bonus: you can take a Companion along on every flight for free, for the rest of that year and all of the next. This of course could be worth thousands to you.

Your best shot the first time is to get the Southwest Visa. There have been 50K signup bonuses this year. Then do as much flying as you can with them, and put as much CC spending on that card as you can. Utilities, gasoline, insurance, groceries, everything. If you watch for deals and bonuses, you should be able to get to 110K, but it all has to happen in the calendar year.

Since the year is half over, you may want to wait until Jan. 1 to unleash this strategy. Almost 2 years of free flights (most of 2013 and all of 2014) is pretty valuable.

Whatever you do, you need to focus hard on that specific program.

Also recommend you try to meet knowledgeable Flyertalk people at local events.

MSPeconomist

I was also thinking that Southwest could work for the OP. However, how does the new company feel about a spouse going along on all business trips? Some employers might not like this, even though you pay all of the spouse's incremental expenses.

Do not switch to UA until its merger mess is fixed. For th same reason, I would be reluctant to pick US or AA now. Note that the AA fans seem to be EXPs, not Golds, who must pay for upgrades with stickers and don't get many perks. AA might not have the frequent connections you need and might involve lots of RJs without FC.

Staying with DL and doing one of their credit cards also makes sense, at least until you decide whether you want to switch to UA/US/AA after the merger pains are over, either (Gold AMEX) as a backup if you fall short of 25,000 status miles or (Plat, Reserve) to get additional status miles, including rollover.

oshelef

When did this become their business?

What the OP does need to do is make sure that having their spouse with them shouldn't impact the OP's availability to do the job, including networking and contact time with clients.