Originally Posted by tbr123psu

(1) What is your home airport?
Currently, PHL. But about mid-2012, I will be moving. My new home airport will be SCE - a small regional airport that connects to Detroit with Delta, Washington-Dulles with United, and PHL with US.

(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.)
Cheapest I can find, as per company policy.

(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k)
>50k

(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Premier, M&M Senator etc)
US DM Silver

(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (Frequent upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, good award redemption rates, free lounge access, etc.)
Upgrades. I'm a bigger dude and so any extra space is the most important thing for me to get out of the FFP.

(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc)
US Domestic. To destinations all across the states - not just east coast.

(7) Preferred Airlines
US, UA, maybe Delta

(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?)
Work. Have little flexibility with regards to airlines and class - usually booked through AmEx travel, company regulations around bookings.

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I guess what I'm really curious about is if it would be worth it to aim to achieve silver status on both MP and DM?

I really just started traveling for business this year, and I've achieved Silver with DM. I was thinking that since US hubs out of PHL, I should probably just focus on that one program, so that's what I've done.

However, I'm finding that I think I prefer UA - the couple of times I've flown UA and booked late and been assigned into E+ I've loved it. And getting IFE is both a blessing and a curse. I totally space out and watch whatever they put on. So if I have something I should be doing, I don't usually do it... but that's probably more of a fake complaint than anything. On the other hand, US has in flight internet on some of the cross country flights, and I think UA is working on that, but at the moment, I'm a big enough internet consumer to really be swayed by the availability of a connection.

So I'm a little unsure - everything I've seen says pick one and go with it - especially within an alliance. And that's what I had done. But there's a part of me that thinks being silver on both US and UA would do me more good than being gold on just one of them, for the abilities to get seats with more room.

My other concern would be that getting some status with both might be beneficial with regards to needing to get back into SCE through a larger hub. Something to consider here is that US does offer a few more flights than either of the others (3 each way for Delta, 4 for UA, and 6 for US).

I'm just not sure if being *G though one of them gets me the same benefits that being Silver on both individual programs would?

If I would just focus on one, would there be any reason to not jump ship and go with UA?

Thanks in advance for any input!