To be honest the current WorldPerks program even after all the DL changes has not been bad to me. I have gotten my upgrades which are most important to me, and I have managed to redeem two mileage awards to Asia one on SQ in F which is very big plus and one on Korean in C at the 120,000. However I have noticed that domestic redemption has gone through the roof, but then i rarely if ever used my miles for domestic flights as I thing the value proposition presented by international premium cabins is far more compelling on a $/M basis.
So all this said I will be sticking with DL, but while lamenting CO's departure I could not help but take a gander over to the onepass page and have a look. I never noticed that CO offers full EQM on most of their partners outside of Skyteam. Eva would be great for me for asian travel and Emirates is just a qulaity airline so to get EQM on the would be awesome. Anyways as I said I am sticking with DL but as with CO when they were NW's partner its good to know there is another choice out there ;-)
So in 2010 I will evaluate and see where the best value is to be had. For the moment DL has good service and fares to the destinations i frequent namely South Florida and South East Asia. However I doubt I will be able to earn DM again next year due to the lack of triple miles, thank you EQM and credit card intro EQM. So I will have to evaluate if DL is still right for me. How the partnership with UA is structed will also be a large determinant. As noted in my original post having 3 major airlines to chose from in Skyteam was a great plus. Now Star alliance is going to offer that all be it without upgrades on the other two. So I guess if you really boil it down it comes to fares so long as Delta remains competitive and does not try to assert its dominance too much then I here to stay. Fares to South Florida always seem to be reasonable with enough advanced booking and the new PEU/PMU are good enough substitute for the decreased Z inventory I have noticed on flights to SEA.
Still sad to see you go CO!
oh to n7371f I actually have yet to fly on one of the 900's but my IAH to LAX is on one of them so I really hope I get the up on that one. That said I hope its not quite as great as you describe because I would hate to taste something that good and not be able to have it again ;-)