I work for a large consulting firm (10K flights per week from US based employees, as I understand it), and we just heard today that UA was unwilling to match the discounts offered by other airlines, and they are being dropped from our travel program effective immediately. Being based near IAD (and having been 1K for 5 years now), this is a huge blow to me.

My personal travel habits consist of 1-2 trips per year to Asia (MNL) and 2-3 trips per year to western Europe (all paid business). Then random personal trips where I buy coach and try and upgrade (India next month).

I've done some searching, and seen some similar threads, but none that I could find that addressed this question:

Among our choices, we are allowed to status match to Continental or Lufthansa (who are both staying in our travel program). We've been told that we will still be able to fly UA metal on CO or LH ticket stock, but only when the fare is similar to our 'preferred partners'. We would only be allowed to fly on UA stock when the price is several hundred cheaper than our preferred carriers (won't ever happen due to the steep discounts we get).

Assuming that I decide to stick with Star Alliance, I'm trying to figure out if I am better off sticking with UA MP and crediting my CO and LH flights there, or switching to CO or LH mileage program. I might be missing it, but it seems like CO and LH don't really have anything like the SWU's or CR-1s that we get for 1K. On the other hand, my UA metal (being able to use SWUs) might end up being limited to trans-Atlantic flights on LH stock.

Any thoughts and advice (or being pointed to threads with info) would be appreciated!

PS: My other obvious choice is to take EXP PLAT on AA and totally switch to OW, but I am not as excited with that being based in IAD (very few non stop choices)