I am in the same boat as MilesJamie, except I reside in PHX.

One thing to keep in mind with NW is one must purchase a specific int'l fare class to be eligible for a mileage upgrade, and the fare is significantly higher.

So here's my story:

Currently have 72k AS and 167k NW miles and am NW & HP Gold (comped). Primary goals have and continue to be to earn maximum miles and ride in F.

The wrinkle is this. After I embarked on this personal travel hobby, I find out Mrs. Western would rather go to Australia than Europe in F on miles. This is difficult and quite a trip on NW, and requires going through KUL and using MH (which is not a bad thing if one has time).

The reasons I am considering making AS primary and NW secondary instead of the current vice versa are basically twofold. One, AS partners with QF, which turns out is desirable to the Mrs. Two, Gold Elite on AS requires only 35k miles on AS / QX.

Pro's of AS: Lower Gold mileage requirement, awesome list of airline partners, better pitch in Y, would earn miles (not elite) on BA transatlantic, have been member forever (hometown ANC) and always treated me well, can confirm upgrades at time of purchase.

Con's of AS: Realistically would probably only get comped MVP, so would be missing out on 50% of bonus until I made Gold. Would have to go to SEA or PDX from here, and most of my travel is either LAS or points east of here. AS fares PHX-SEA-LAS are not competitive, not even worth considering in fact. Granted, could fly NW (current preferred carrier), but would then have to get 50k miles for Gold, thus defeating one reason for switching to AS. Only fly 73's and MD-80's, vs. 74's, 75's and 'buses of NW. I tend to travel on NW fare sales, so it's possible that I would spend as much or more to get 35k AS miles as 50k NW miles. (e.g. I did a run PHX-SAT via EWR for $193 that netted almost 7200 miles.) Would miss out on NW EUA's (currently get UG'd high percentage of time).

This is not an obvious choice, but given that we want two F tickets to Australia, and are 200k miles away from that, earning AS miles and bonuses is desirable. It would take me a long time to earn that many miles with the CC and iDine.

Any comments would be welcomed. Perhaps the solution is to continue to fly NW but put the miles to AS and suck up the short-term loss of bonus miles, as well as lose out on the NW EUA. From what Seat 2A says, though, he gets UG'd most of the time on NW anyway.

Thanks for any help.

Edited to add: Based on QX's post below, I submit an educated guess that the first letter of said carrier is C and the second one is X, in which case my choice may be a whole lot easier....after all, don't all us FT'ers dream of F on them?

[This message has been edited by Western Airlines (edited 12-19-2002).]