Trust me, as a SEA based elite playing both sides of the aisle, the AS grass isnt greener. Upgrades are more scarce, and the new Premium class nonsense makes it hard to get a decent seat in Y on a discount ticket even as MVP Gold. They’re losing all their partners, making it harder to qualify and fly them internationally. They tend to have the crappiest terminal, counter and gate assignments at outstations - BOS is a particular offender with a miserable little dongle off of the JetBlue terminal that doesn’t even have PreCheck, but RDU wasn’t much better. The lounges are crap compared to Delta - once upon a time, soup was innovative, but now it’s barely table stakes. The onboard catering is pathetically bad, especially in F, to the point where they finally formalized the option to skip the F meal in favor of the coach cheese plate - and it was cheered by the elites (!). The N gates in SEA are currently under heavy renovation, and woe be unto you if you get stuck at N12A. The Virgin integration is a mess, and the frequent flier program strongly disincentivizes ever booking a VX operated flight right now (while being very favorable to VX elites flying on AS metal - it’s really unbalanced.). There’s no priority baggage - their claim that “all baggage is priority” is about as bogus as the claim that “every seat is first class” on a QX Q400. The AS flight attendants tend to be less engaged and available; lots more loud galley conversation, or instances where only one FA is abandoned to deal with the F meal service even once coach is finished, and drink refills are often scarce. On that note, they don’t do proper predeparture beverages in F - hope you like water. On AS, it never gets better than a 737; there’s nothing with more space or comfort to choose for transcons. Nothing has real IFE, and the Dig-E-Players they sell have a tiny, lousy subset of content. Horizon operated flights have been an operational mess this year and will continue to be that way until their figure out their pilot staffing failures.

Basically, AS was once innovative but has been frozen in amber for the last few years while Delta has “kept climbing”. I made the status match switch to AS a few years ago when Delta briefly introduced the horrible no-companions-in-C+-at-booking policy for elites, but once DL reversed that I’ve migrated back. I’ve managed to maaintain MVPG by flying partners, but with only one exception al the partners I flew (AM, AF) are gone now... so I don’t see myself maintaining the status in 2018 unless a miracle occurs.

I will say AS is better for a no status flyer, marginally, than Delta due to the lack of basic economy. They also have very generous change and cancellation policies that get even more generous for elites, which accounts for most of my remaining bookings on Alaska. Basically, all my west coast flying goes to Delta if I’m sure of the travel date, and if there’s uncertainty I choose AS for the flexibility...