Originally Posted by
Carolinian
Read the UA board about UA's StarNet filtering. That may present problems for someone such as yourself who flies beyond the UA gateways. The upshot is that even though partner award inventory is availible to UA, UA chooses not to let you have it. US, CO, and BD among * carriers do not block StarNet availibility to their members, and would seem to be better bets.
100% correct. If your objective is to get international business class saver awards, UA is a bad choice thanks to *A blocking. Given your travel patterns, CO might be a better choice as you will get some reciprocal benefits if you fly UA. But BD actually has a good program too and a better award chart.
Of course, the major downside to not crediting UA is you will miss out on some UA elite benefits. But that may not be the end of the world for you.
Originally Posted by
european28
Thanks for the advice. I checked reward availability on UA and CO websites for sample dates this summer to WAW and indeed UA looked as bad as DL (no availability), while CO has lots of availability. Based on that I am being pushed toward CO, however, no status matching by CO (as reported by LADELTA777 ) is a major letdown.
How about US? Is it comparable to CO and UA?
A great example of *A blocking at work. Plenty of availability from LOT, but UA is blocking award reservations while CO is not.
Don't let the lack of a status match deter you. You'll be elite soon enough.
