Im still really on the fence as to what to do. As has been pointed out by several, it is unlikely that there will be a lot of bad changes this year. The merger wont go into effect until towards the end of the year. If the crews wont be changing planes for 3 years as some have said that means that if I am careful I might not have to deal with US crews for that long. Then it comes to how long it will take them to reduce the on board service, schedules, the AAdvantage program, on time rates, and the EXP desk and that is anyones guess but I think some of it will come as early as next year. In addition, it isnt clear where to go. I have a friend who is a 1K (and EXP) and flies similar destinations to what I do. I just sent him a text to get his current feeling on UA upgrades. I also have 10, and I think will soon have 2 more, eVIPs on AA for this year. I got the standard 8, plus 2 more for some reason, they like me or something, and then I think I get 2 for going over 2 million miles which if I stay will be soon. I dumped my SWUs on UA when I left while a 1K and hate to do the same thing on AA, especially 12 of them. All reasons to stay this year.
Reasons to leave AA this year, are to basically get it over with, which is a set of reasons ranging from not wasting gaining more miles on the new carrier to psychological reasons to get it out of my mind. I dont know much about DL but need to find out more. I'm a lifetime Premier Exec on UA, or whatever they call it now, so I wouldnt be starting from scratch if I went back to them. Before this happened I asked my assistant to put together flights for us to go over for trips to London, San Francisco and Tokyo I have coming up but I told her to hold up after this while I decided whether to stick with AA.
At this point I am leaning towards sticking it out for this year, and if what I expect will happen does, just cut a lot of my trips. I do have this nagging feeling that should be checking out DL at this point though.