Given the stated travel patterns, and assuming you're not going to be going to US hubs a lot, I'd probably pick UA as the primary account to accrue status on. I would rationalize that a decent amount of the potential US flying I'd be doing would be very short hop, even if I was flying to DCA/CLT/PHL (and I don't perceive a lot of benefit from an F cabin on a route that's less than 2 hours- upgrades are irrelevant to me at that point, it's all about price, schedule and coach experience).
US's coverage is much weaker across the Western US than UA's. Flying out of one of JFK/LGA, you should be able to hit DEN, LAX, ORD, IAH and SFO as a nonstop, whereas on US you'll be connecting PHL/CLT/DCA. Economy Plus (E+) is definitely going to be a factor here, too.
The RDM bonus at elite levels is weaker for US compared to UA, too: 50,000 EQM a year gets a 100% bonus on UA as Premier Executive (1P), 50% bonus on US. You don't get 100% until you hit Chairman's Preferred at 100,000 EQM a year.
That being said, I'd get a US mileage account and accrue in it strategically (their mileage earning/accrual promotions complete trump anything UA/CO offers). I wouldn't put
flight miles in it (unless for some reason you're finding yourself on US flights a lot- one feature is they are able to upgrade their own lower level elites better than UA), but hotel, car rentals, and other miles (including buying miles) can give you first-class and business class itineraries at pennies on the dollar. Read the
*A partner award thread and
GS 2011 thread for more.
Originally Posted by
Driving by DCA
It seems that US may be implementing something like *Net blocking now that they've sold off tons of miles. That always sucked with UA, but they seem to have moved away from it post merger. Domestic airline miles are best spent on partner premium cabins, so the harder a carrier makes it to do that the less valuable those miles are.
I am not convinced this is the case (but this probably isn't the place to go into the weeds on that argument)- and I just redeemed 90,000 miles I acquired at around ~1 cpm (from the 2010 Grand Slam and the May 2011 Wyndham Rewards/Discover America promo+US 50% bonus for hotel point transfer, plus the odd car rental/hotel) for SEA-ICN(OZ)-HKG(dest)-BKK(overnight stop on New Year's Eve)-FRA(TG)-YYZ(AC)-ORD-SEA(UA) in business class, on dates I wanted (I had very little margin to adjust the dates- basically a week's vacation). I think that's outstanding value any way you cut it. That redemption would be impossible on UA.