It all depends upon your travel patterns. UA has always had a superior international product, although there is nothing wrong with WBC. Top-tier with NW at 75K versus 100K with UA. Even at Silver the comp domestic UG success was around 65 percent, plus the seat selection and priority boarding benefits.

Everything with NW is electronic. It seems UA is still stuck in the paper age. I have a $400 UA VDB and I have to go to the airport to ticket. I'm still scratching my head over that one.

The Gold/Plat elite call center folks are the best in the business. I always heard that before hitting Gold but now I experience first-hand. I had to make a rather complicated change for three of us to MCO next week. I tried online for 90 minutes until I finally had to call Chisolm. The lady fixed it in about 10 minutes. That rocked!

I was gifted 3P on UA and Economy+ last trip was nice. The people were friendly and the service was good but the situation with the equipment change and subsequent bump and how the ORD gate people handled it left me feeling used and abused. It reminded me why I stopped flying UA when I no longer worked for Uncle Sam.

Let's see, connect through DTW or MSP versus ORD...hmm, that's a tough one, let me think; it's January and there is a foot of snow blowing around...

Living in the midwest I have found that NW does a pretty good job. I tried them out when they opened MEM and the bonuses were sky high. I've never looked back. What will happen when DL takes over? Well, I'm in a 'wait and see' mode and willing to give them a shot. But if it tanks I'm ready to do a status challenge or status match and press on (but certainly not with US, a UA alliance partner).

It's always interesting to see these threads because we rarely see the OP come back a year later and say, "Here's what happened." It's always a case of personal preferences and YMMV but it's also nice to see how the end result compares with the original concern.