Originally Posted by
anabolism
I completely understand that view. Personally, I still find AA miles to be valuable, but for partner awards in F/J. Even then, it's a lot worse than it used to be, given that some partners are harder to book than in the past, and AA's abysmal availability for connecting domestic flights, and the new four-segment hard maximum per award. I would guess UA or AS would be the better choice, though, not DL. But I'm no expert in any of those.
DL was a woke up call to me 2 years ago when I was not able to find ANY award seats on either AA metal or its partners even incl IB and gasp, BA, for 2 J seats to ANY European gateways served by AA or its partners.
Then I took a look at DL - lo and behold, there were seats at 65K on Virgin Atlantic, connected to Alitalia, in the height of Summer travel months June, Jul and Aug - virtually the whole month of June and July had the saver seats (2 no less) and 2/3 of August had 2 saaver seats too. Our desirable date had availability on Virgin while AA showed absolutely ZERO to anywhere in Europe it flew.
Sure, AA only charges 55K while DL charges 65K at that time, but what did it do me any good with 10K less miles when there was absolutely no seat even we were willing to go out of the way to get to FCO (for a Med cruise)?
Needless to say, that was a rude wake up call to debunk the myth I had in my mind about how bad DL was. Even back in 2013 we were able to book a DL saver on AZ and AF with a stopover and an OJ for a trip entered at Stockholm, OJ between Stockholm and Moscow, with stopover/destination at Amsterdam and then back to US - tried that with AA, and that was in 2013... Hence I posted on AA forum to rant about AA was the new DL when DL was much better than in the past.
DL is very dynamic - both the long haul and the short distance, there are times you wonder if you are looking at DL site when some unbelievable prices pop up - in a good way, such as 6K between South Florida and Upstate New York in coach.... Again, try that with AA.
We still have a combined balance of 700K in our AA accounts. They are primarily used on QR flights using the 3rd region exception rules for EU-Australia via DOH QR to QR, or US to South Africa via DOH. But we have done 3 trips to South Africa in 3 consecutive years, 1 trip to Middle East and 1 trip EU to Australia - so the usefulness of QR is running out. With AB bit the dust and AY is near impossible to book, I dont know how good the AA miles would be for US-EU trips. To Asia, the AS miles still far superior... Hence there is no reason to pay $89 for the 10K anniversary miles. Just get a new card for far less cost.