Originally Posted by coloneltigh

I'm about to move from NYC to Boston. My job is allowing me to be a remote worker with the agreement that I'll work out of the NY HQ a week a month. One of the things I'm considering is flying back and forth. The monthly trips should net me 24 segments - that along with the likely 6 segments of work travel in addition will get me to 30 segments for the bottom tier of AA, UA or DL. The other 3 R/Ts for work would be to China (HKG or CAN), AUS and another tech city (generally for a tech conference of some sort). Given the competition on the route the fares seem to be lined up across all the carriers so it would seem that free agent wouldn't be any benefit vs the possibility of gaining a bottom tier status.

I think the main competitors are DL or B6. I'm staying with family east of the East River so UA and EWR doesn't make much sense. AA is a one-stop to AUS whereas DL and B6 have non-stops to AUS from BOS. My wife loves B6 for our leisure travel because we can book Mint but for my three R/Ts to HKG/CAN, AUS and other I worry about service recovery with B6. Not worried about service recovery on the NYC-BOS since if it gets cancelled or waivered I'd just take a bus. Not to mention that I don't think my TPAC long haul would earn anything towards Mosaic even if I flew a B6 partner. Which leaves me with DL since I can get to CAN on CZ or HKG on DL. Am I missing something?

A couple of other points - another way to look at it is to just bus it and use the savings to buy premium cabin. I didn't involve Amtrak since even though an argument could be made that it's the same amount of time with security etc on the train - a) it takes the same or more time than the bus and costs more and b) chasing Amtrak status doesn't help me with my other travel.