Originally Posted by iahphx

In a nutshell, the basic difference is that CO is generally run by people who know what they're doing, and UA often isn't. So while we sometimes enjoy decent service on UA, it's all a bit random. Sometimes we don't like some of CO's policies, but there's usually a reasonable business justification behind them.

We all know that bad, failing airlines can deliver extraordinary ff benefits. For the short term. But for the longer term, you want the airline to be decently run. CO is. UA has generally not been.