Will you continue flying on DL and UA at least occasionally? If not it would be a shame to leave a total of 19K miles with those carriers - not enough for a R/T award but too many to just abandon.

As for the merger, there are two possibilities - US/AA negotiate a settlement with the DOJ or the trial goes forward. A negotiated settlement could happen any time, making it somewhat hard to forecast when changes that would affect your decision might happen. If the trial goes forward, it won't start till the 2nd half of November as I recall, and who knows how long the judge will take to issue a ruling or what it will be. So a trial means that US probably wouldn't leave *A before the first of the year.

In short, no one can give you firm dates for much of anything - the merger, leaving *A, whatever.

Jim