Originally Posted by
spamboy
Basically wherever I want to go Jetblue for example seems to fly direct at great times (eg. friday night flight and redeye from denver for skiing, direct to New Orleans, good flights to the carribean) AA seems to force you through ORD, DFW or MIA.
Is that just my impression? Are there good places to go direct from NYC? Especially weekends skiing or interesting US cities. Any other airlines I should consider, I'd like to fly an airline that has a FF program.
There are two models for airline routing systems, the hub-and-spoke model and the point-to-point model. AA is predominantly a hub-and-spoke model, so it tends to route you through its hubs. From the point of view of someone trying to achieve status, this is a good thing, not a bad thing. Going through a hub adds miles and segments. Don't understand why you are complaining. As an example, LGA-EGE round trip is 3478 miles, so it would take 29 such trips to make EXP. Route it through DFW, and it is 4220 miles, so it would only take 24 trips. The effect can be even more pronounced on closer destinations. For example, LGA-PIT is 1000 miles round-trip (with the 500 mile minimums), but route it through DFW and you get 4914 miles.