Well, the time has come, I think.

With the new last-minute award fees for award travel, maintaining status with NW/DL is not worth it to me anymore. That was the last great use of miles for me, and DL has completely eviscerated it.

So now what?

• Us: married, 1 young child, live between PDX and SEA.

• travel: except for 1 or 2 trips to LAX, all our travel is leisure. We fly between 25k-50k EQMs per year, it is a stretch to make the 50k level.

• destinations: DTW 2-3 times per year; DFW 3-4 times per year; SLC 1-2 times per year; Europe once per year; Mexico or C. America or Caribbean once per year; Hawaii once per year; a few other domestic destinations thrown in.

• most important benefits: no more gouging and nickel-and-diming fees. Especially baggage fees and last-minute award fees. Domestic upgrades have been nice, but I'll give those up for a more humane program. Bonus miles combined with miles that I can use without exorbitant fees and with fair availability. Call center agents that speak standard American English.
• benefits that don't matter a lot: international upgrades (we don't travel internationally enough). pre-boarding. lounges/clubs access. associations with hotel programs. free drinks and food on the plane is not a priority.

So what to do? Thoughts:
1. CO - love flying them, I love their service, I like their website, they have good service to DFW but only fair service to DTW. Biggest problem is 50% EQM for cheap fares, but we usually buy on line so this won't often be an issue. Route network matches our needs. But a UA partner... does this portend badness down the road?
2. UA - will not fly.
3. AA - great service to DFW, obviously. But to DTW I have to fly through ORD. There would be almost no upgrades... what are their junk fees like? I read through their elite benefits package and other than bonus miles, preboarding, and the smallest chance for an upgrade as AA Gold, I didn't see much to offer.
4. AS - awesome for the west coast, but partners everywhere else we fly (even DFW doesn't usually price right out of PDX). I don't think AS elite benefits on their partners are noteworthy, so I'd spend a lot of time flying as a non-elite. OTOH, they have a lot of partners.
5. combination of WN and nobody - has the time come to bolt eliteness altogether? Would I really do better just taking the cheapest flight everywhere I go? As an elite on NW, I already see minimal benefit to flying internationally with them, so I guess I don't lose much. Would it be better to maintain at least silver with NW and then fly the additional up to 25k miles on the cheapest airline?

As always thanks in advance to the FT community for your insight and advice.