Originally Posted by
pinniped
Out of SFO, you'll find the greatest number of flight options with *A.
....But that certainly shouldn't stop you from taking advantage of any and all credit card offers for which you are eligible.
Hit the best AA offer you can get, either 75k or 100k is a historically high offer for that program. Hit both UA and CO if you can, for the aforementioned merger reasons.
I think I'd probably base my travels on UA as my primary carrier. They have a big presence there, you'd always have Economy Plus as a backup to Biz. Only downside...there are a ton of 1K's out of SFO, so if you're more of a 1P type flier (mid-tier, less than 100,000 EQM per year) you might find yourself far down in the pecking order for waitlisted upgrades at the gate.
Yeah I would be targeting 50k EQMs at the most.
There aren't upgrades on partner airlines are there? Or upgrades on international segments?
Ideally, I'd use SFO-FRA as much as possible, both for accumulating miles and for awards.
Yeah I did okay on domestic upgrades out of SFO as DL GM so that would be something I might miss.
As for getting the AA offer, if I go UA, I can't imagine ever flying AA or OW, maybe Qantas if it's AA code-shared. So I'd have to maintain those miles and after spending to get those miles, I can't imagine using those AA cards over my Schwab Signature Visa.
I haven't explored the UA and CO cards or what offers they have.
Might be too many cards to get though.