Any judgement about the merits or otherwise of an airline is going to be relative to where one lives and flies. I live near SFO, and fly an approximately even mix of trips to Europe, Melbourne, LA and the East Coast. Roughly 50/50 work/personal. But I work for a nonprofit with scant travel funding, so I can't just ignore costs for my work trips.

In the past I've chosen tickets based on price and directness, without much loyalty to any carrier or alliance. The past 18 months has been an experiment, flying UA almost exclusively. With the DEQMs, I'm going to make 1K by the end of the year.

But I'd say that overall the experiment hasn't been entirely successful: UA's change fees are so high that they induce deadweight loss -- my trip is messed up with inconvenient dates and UA doesn't get any change fee whatsoever.

Sigh. Perhaps I should try switching back to QF for Australian trips, but credit to AA... Or has anyone found a way to avoid this problem with UA?