Originally Posted by
tom911
It will be a rainy day in hell before I move my business to UA at SFO after the devaluation of their frequent flyer program for both midtier and lifetime members. I have been flying both AA and UA and will be moving all my business to AA now. As a leisure flyer I can live with the changes. Just not enough to make me abandon AA. A separate factor, for those at the 1K level at UA, is you have to "buy-up" to a higher fares to use systemwides there. I refuse to do that and have given all my systemwides away the last two years. I have not done that with AA systemwides.
The grass is not always greener on the other side just because they have more flights.
I hear what you're saying here. It definitely makes me prefer EXP to 1K. I don't travel internationally too much so when I do the buy-up isn't usually too big of a problem. The buy-up can probably be a bit painful, understandably, if the C upgrade doesn't clear in the end, but UA has a bigger widebody fleet with the 747s for example having 51 seats in C class. Domestically, I find that I can easily pick a 757 or 763 to most of the locations I fly ex-SFO, and increase my chances of an upgrade in the process. On AA I've got 738s, inconvenient connections in some of the most congested markets in the country, with anklebiter battlefield upgrades and "seasonal" capacity cuts to NYC.
If the frequent flyer program alone was my choice, I think AA would be the easiest option in terms of redemption benefits (miles for hotels) and upgrades (no fare class consideration other than Y/Bconnection trumping etc)--but I just got really tired of spending hours in ORD and DFW and dealing with proactive cancellations every time it sprinkles. As long as I get my domestic upgrade I'm usually OK with the experience thereafter. There's a few things I miss on AA-but again, I just enjoyed arriving early 95%+ of the time and sitting in a cushy leather domestic F seat or E+ seat w/ a decent BOB option along with a convenient schedule that fit my travel needs