bpratt

i think those are the big determiners you left out. If you are based at a United hub and fly more domestic than international, or to a wide range of intl destinations, staying with United probably makes sense. If you aren't at a hub and/or fly to a smaller set of overseas locales, then you might pick something else.

For instance, I'm only 1K these days, but since I fly out of SFO to a whole range of domestic and international destinations, there is no other airline where I could get equivalent status or even close. For a couple of years I stayed away from United when I could, but that meant flying a combo of Virgin, Alaska, Jet Blue, Hawaiian and even Delta a couple of times domestically, and Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Air New Zealand, and Singapore internationally. still ended up on United sometimes when that was the only schedule that made sense.

For me out of SFO United just makes the most sense.

Now one if I almost always flew to New York and London, like a banker friend of mine does, then a combo of AA and BA or Virgin Atlantic and Delta or something like that would be really appealing. But with my travel pattern it doesn't work.

On the the other side, if you're based in Atlanta then why haven't you already switched to Delta? :-)

so it really depends on location and flight patterns i think.