eponymous_coward

I would actually do the exact opposite of what you're doing- fly CO for domestic (which will become UA by 2012, by the way), redeem in US Dividend Miles for international, and be fairly agnostic in which FF program you do it in, as long as US isn't in Chapter 11 by the time 2011-2012 rolls around. I'd probably pick whichever one was offering bonuses and so on (which is most likely to be US) for the domestic flights.

My experience with US domestic redemptions is that they are nearly impossible to do at low value. If you're used to AA, this is likely to annoy you. UA/CO are going to be better as far as that goes (but their low awards will be available to you out of US DM), and you have a number of Hawaii options out of Southern California- both UA and CO fly to Hawaii from LAX, CO flies from SNA, and UA flies to Cancun out of LAX (and CO flies as a one-stop to Cancun via Houston which is probably a nicer experience in F than US SAN-PHX-CUN- for one thing, US flies RJs out of SAN).

The reason you want to pick US for international redemptions is their mileage cost to Europe's significantly lower. See US levels and CO levels (which might be UA redemption levels by the time you get around to doing this).

Also, to be perfectly honest, if you're redeeming Star Alliance Europe awards in any cabin, I'm not sure I'd pick CO OR UA OR US as the airline to fly on, given that you have Lufthansa, Swiss, Air New Zealand or Air Canada, all of which have highly regarded F or J products (and whose Y products also probably beat UA or CO). Given that a US or CO redemption means a one-stop (potentially in Newark or Philadephia, where you could get hit by problems on the East Coast), I'd prefer either travel that doesn't involve stops in the US, or sticking to the West Coast. UA does have nonstop options out of LAX, or you could go out of SFO or LAX as a one-stop from SAN.