I've been a 1K for several years now - business travel for me has subsided to next to nothing in my current job, so it's mostly been on my own dime.

I thinking about this year, I've got about 73k booked for the year. As I'm a 1k who travels mostly on lower rated fares, I'm wondering if it's worth the effort to hit 1k again.

I may be in a role where I travel more - but that won't be for at least another 12-18 months, if at all - so I'm mostly traveling on Th-Mo dates and as 1k, I've found myself in the back of the bus more often than not anyways.

The only reason I haven't made the switch to AA yet is because of my lifetime RCC membership and the 600k miles I have in my account to burn (which is easier to burn as an elite - I still have 225k DL miles I haven't been able to effectively use since the DL/NW merger). I figure I'll stick with UA til I hit Million Miler & then move on if it hasn't gotten better (and that's 3-4 years away for me).

I do mostly domestic - so SWU's aren't as effectively used...I'd miss the bonus miles, but 75% isn't terrible. And the main reason I wanted 1K was for the luggage (platinum gets the same) and the ability to cancel award tix and better award inventory (and I think Platinum gets the same).

Being NYC based - AA and DL just have way better fares than UA and *A does.

Not ready to make a committed change yet - but thinking about it & curious on others takes?