Originally Posted by
thepla
Since you are looking at getting miles, it can be assumed you would like to use them.
From all the threads, and my experience with 3 Million miles in both DL and AA you are way better to accumulate AA miles. With DL, especially overseas, you will need to accumulate twice as many miles for awards. Read all the threads on DL about how difficult it it to use their miles. They just don't seem to have standard awards until it is so close to flight that you need to pay fees.
With AA it is WAY easier to use miles for awards.
I agree, using DL for booking international awards is quite a challenge. Until about a year ago, you could not even check the availability of international reward flights on-line; the only way of finding that was to call in and hang on the phone (literary for hours) while they were checking individually each system of each partner airline for availability. Most of the time, nothing was available, so the process had to be repeated daily for weeks at a time.
I lucked out last year when DL/NW merger was going on. I was able to transfer my DL miles to NW and book DL international flights through NW portal (the same flights did not show as available on DL website).
I wish I found FT sooner. There is a wealth of information here.