Completed a challenge and made Platinum. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I've got it.
Something as simple as WN discontinuing non-stops to Chicago after 2PM from all 3 Bay Area airports had me shopping around. Routing to ChicagoxDEN/xLAS/xPHX/xLAX gets you nothing in the WN world, except make you two hours later. So I do the math...hmmm...another Chicago trip, work trips to MIA and JFK, throw a few SFO/SJC-LAX runs their way...shoot, I can do 10,000 points even on Q fares at 0.5 pt/mi. Piece of cake.
Anyway, 10 weeks of steady AA convinced me AA >> UA, that's for certain. They'll get some of my business. But to make to make EXP (or 1K) I'd have to do it on segments, and my bread-and-butter 30-40 LAX runs/year would be a lot harder on AA SFO-LAX (and mostly miserable on AA SJC-LAX) than WN.