BTW - great thread MileKing. I like the way you state what your evaluation criteria is. I have seen many ratings by the advisory board in Inside Flyer, even ratings ranging from A to D for the same program by different advisors. So it is really good to know what someone is judging the airlines on.

Many years ago I also faced a lot of problems claiming standard awards with CO when I was gold with them. Part of the problem was that they pulled out of San Jose then, and only flew out of San Francisco and it was very hard to get the award portion from San Francisco to their hubs. Award redemption was a big reason I switched away from CO.

Re: upgrades, my personal experience is with CO, NW and UA. The first two provided unlimited domestic upgrades (on a space available basis). United provides 2K upgrade certs per 10K flight miles, plus additional certs for 1K members. But my impressions are that my upgrade success rate with United is at least as good as it was with NW/CO. Maybe I am more savvy now about getting upgrades, but CO has the dubious distinction for me for being the only airline where I received a first class boarding pass (with an upgrade) and was seated in my seat when I was asked to move to a coach seat.

[This message has been edited by pgupta011 (edited 08-24-1999).]