Originally Posted by
SDCA
The cabin services and cramp coach seats on the 747 of United makes flying the roomy all coach seats on Southwest looks like First Class.
If you had status you would have been in E+ which is First Class compared to everything on WN and you would have been a whole lot happier on all segments of your flight
Originally Posted by
mritty
With RapidRewards 2.0, and the Southwest Visa credit card, that statement is no longer true.
With 3 kids and a wife and redeeming at 120 points / $1 the OP is going to have to pay for tickets. If the OP made 1k, he would have 200k miles a year for redemption. Y to Europe is only 55k miles each. So with a little CC spend or mileage earning from partners 220k miles for 4 tickets to europe, buys one for himself and upgrades with SWU into C. Of course the C ticket would be handed over to the wife
Originally Posted by
Travelin Man 069
The only common trip I know I will make for sure is to Las Vegas and maybe Columbus, OH - sporadically to other places, but International travel appears to be on the horizon - nothing in concrete yet though.
My schedule would usually be flexible (get there noonish on Mondays and leave noonish of Fridays) - both airlines seemed to have several options DEN-LAS
Business Select is permitted
It would be mostly 2 flights a week - to destination and back - not several per week
Family has 3 young children (6 and under) so I'm not going to be carting them all over the place on vacations, but it would be nice to fly to say California or (insert random destination here) once a year for a vacation or back to Fort Wayne to see family occasionally.
Trying to weigh what looks like the ability to earn a lot more free tickets on SWA verses being pampered more (eventually) on UA
Thanks!
If you did a challenge you could have 1P which is the 50k mile elite tier right away and have 90 days to fiy 15k miles to keep the status. The benefits are pretty good at that level. Double miles earned on all flights, pre-booking of exit rows and access to *A lounges when traveling internationally. According to this handy
website you would get upgraded 87% of the time. The stats aren't exactly accurate but safe to say way more than 50% of the time.
Originally Posted by
jrpaguia
Hey, on Southwest, everyone is in First Class.
...haha, I'm just hoping the 1K guys don't beat me up and lock me in the UD closet when I show up on the Red Carpet with my WN luggage tags.
Sorry we need the closet space besides we don't lock people up that have access to the red carpet because you would be GS, 1k or traveling in F or C. E- is punishment enough on most flights involving a 744.
Originally Posted by
worldwidedreamer
Out of Denver I would try both and see what your like. Living in a similar market, SFO, I use both airlines depending on the trip. For long distance and leisure, United does a better job. For my trips around the west coast, and business trips which tend to have evolving schedules Southwest is much better. My favorite product in the air out of SFO is Virgin America, but they sadly do not offer flights to most of my preferred destinations.
I like Virgin as well it's too bad their FFP is horrible and they don't really fly to places I need to go.
Originally Posted by
pinworm
WN is a good airline...for infrequent fliers. If you are a weekly road warrior, it is much much smarter to start building up status on a legacy.
WN's reward system only gets you a free flight sometimes. It is indeed, a kind of "Grayhound Bus" of the skies. While you may appriciate the laid-back attitude of the crews, I should warn you that this is only amusing to infrequent fliers...when you are going twice a week, it get's old fast.
+1 If you are tired it's not that amusing.
Originally Posted by
pinworm
What you do not want to do is fly WN domestically all the time and when you have to go TATL or TRANSPAC, end up in coach for a longhaul because you have zero status.
+1 That would be absolutely horrible if that happened to you.