zerofighter

Hi All

I will be travelling from YYC to CLE weekly for the next 11 weeks and am wondering if I should use my UA MileagePlus (no status) or Aeroplan (E75K) frequent flyer number for status and point accumulation?

Should mention that I will most likely will not be traveling to the US after this project for work, would only be for leisure.

Thanks
-Pearson

bestcoastflyer

I would use Aeroplan - without any UA status you're better off using your *G, at least you'll get Zone 2 (or 3? can't remember) boarding, baggage allowance, lounge access. You won't get access to preferred seats or comp upgrades, but you wouldn't get either of those things anyways without any UA status.

(Additionally, I usually qualify off AQS, so the benefit of the UA flights counting towards segments is good for me, but YMMV)

zerofighter

It's zone 2. I noticed that the AQM earned is fairly low compared to the PQM earned. My last trip YYC-DEN-CLE only earned 1000 AQM.

Wondering if its worth trying to earn the UA status or continue to get a lower AQM amount towards AC re-qualification.

jc94

If you are flying AC Tango you get 50% miles on TB flights. It's 1662 miles direct so with the extra stop I'm guessing that's the issue.

If you are flying weekly, direct, at full UA miles that's 40k give or take. Is that going to give you decent UA status? I doubt it but am not an expert. Maybe you already have 10k UA miles this year though, and at 50k things improve.

My question would be what airline are you flying next year. If it's AC I'd ensure you get AC status, if UA that makes more sense.

Can you wave your E75 card and get priority boarding, checkin and the like? Or by booking with the AC number than get a kiosk or agent to switch the number at the airport; after you have a Zone (Group for UA?) 2 BP that shows priority access I think it is?

eigenvector

The only significant benefit you'd get from the UA Silver status you'd be able to earn vs. AC E75K would be complimentary E+ seats and eligibility for upgrades to business/first (which you'd be very unlikely to clear as a Silver).

It's probably better to credit to AC to help with requalifying there.

zerofighter

It was booked through CWT as United flights, I didn't manually select my AC number so it defaulted to my UA number on some upcoming flights (YYC-ORD-CLE-ORD-YYC) is 3400 PQM.

Next year and after the project it will most likely be within Canada so AC. There is a chance that I get extended on this US project.

When you put in your *G AC number in as the freq flyer your BP gets premier access (lounge, zone 2, etc). I currently have no miles with UA.




Probably true, only thing would be the reward miles earned will be more with UA but that means no AQM toward AC.

ridefar

Here is my UA approach as an AC SE:

- Buy an E+ upgrade pass on united.com (assuming you value this and fly often enough to justify the $599 -- it is good for a year).
- Book tickets under your UA ff#
- Select E+ seat online/in app
- Check in at airport
- Change your FF# at the end of the checkin process at the kiosk back to AE#
- Get both E+ seats and zone 2 boarding, credit miles to AE

The smallest state

Does this work? I've tried to switch FF# from AS to AA and it never works.

ridefar

Yes, I have done it over a dozen times in the last year. It is a little harder to find now (they changed the description in the kiosks a few months ago I think). It is now under "flyer information" or some such, IIRC; it used to be labeled "change FF #".

172pilot

Why don't you route YYC-YYZ-CLE? Problem solved, collect AE points.

quantumofforce

Is an AC flight pass worth considering?

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MLN21

You sir, are a genius, and I wish I knew of this before I started my flights this year. I've been adding all my MEL to YYZ on MP, and will achieve status, but I totally would have done this to get AC50K

stupid question, but when you book in E+ with UA before your switch, what's your booking class?

ridefar

I just book whatever comes up in Concur (corporate travel booking site). That is usually the equivalent of low Flex. When you use the UA E+ annual pass, it doesn't change the booking class, just makes you eligible to sit in E+. So you could be in something that gives you 50% miles or 100%, it all depends on the original booking class. AFAIK, if you have the UA E+ pass, you can sit in E+ no matter how low the original booking class is. That pass and their Moscow Mules are pretty good reasons to fly UA, as far as I am concerned.

gcashin

If you're doing this weekly and you credited to UA, that's ~4200 miles round-trip when going via DEN and crediting to UA, so you'd get UA silver status after ~6 weeks, based on YYC-DEN-CLE. This would get you free E+ at check-in, and may even get you the occasional upgrade on YYC-DEN. UA offers early recognition even for Silver status, so you'd get your status pretty much instantly after passing 25K. If you did this 11x, you'd be pretty close to UA Gold if not there already.

If you wouldn't be traveling with UA afterwards, it may not be worth it, but I find UA often has better options than AC on US/some overseas routes from YYC, so having UA status can be quite useful. Despite the new YYC terminal having plenty of growing pains, it's still easier/quicker than connecting transborder via YYZ.

ridefar

This is absolutely true.

There are a couple explanations for my approach, which may or may not apply to the OP:

1) If you only have enough miles to qualify top tier for one of the two airlines, pick one and for me that was AC. (I still think -- or did until the AE divorce -- that being SE on AC is better than being Gold on UA and E75 on AC.) And while they aren't worth much anymore AE miles are worth more to me than UA miles for reward travel, because we try to go overseas with our reward flights. Having 50k UA miles doesn't do me much good at all. As it turns out, I good get SE and at least UA gold if I wanted to pretty easily, but still don't want to have 50,000 "useless" UA miles.

2) If you are flying primarily to the Western half of the US, sticking with UA is a good way to go, and at least on the outbound from YYC and inbound to YYC you aren't likely to have to deal with having a plane full of UA status fliers. If you plan to travel to the Eastern half of the US, I prefer AC because of the greater frequency of departures and flexibility. (I also buy the Western Canada to NE USA flight pass too, which is a pretty good deal, on average.) YMMV on this, it really depends on routing, timing, your value on frequency of flights, etc.