Originally Posted by penner42

As UA is my best option out of SBA (and I assume that's the case for most silvers), and generally flying cheap fares, I'd only earn 50% crediting to A3. Granted flying 40K miles for *G is fewer than 50K miles for *G but it's not gonna make a huge difference for silvers who don't get close to making gold.

Edit: A3 does have a 500 mile minimum for UA flights without requiring status, so if you're starting from scratch it's not an awful idea I guess. You lose out on possible CPU upgrades as *G, but they're so rare as Premier Silver anyway it doesn't matter much.