Originally Posted by
jeff1217
From what I've gathered then I suppose convenience is the name of the game. I would've thought that more people would choose FFPs based on benefits, rewards etc. Perhaps in this day and age with the Internet it is easier to compare programs giving more choices to the average consumer.
Why wouldn't convenience be the number one factor? I would chance a guess that in the US, a majority doesn't fly out of one of the few major, international, non-fortress-hub airports. I get that you have a lot of choices flying out of JFK or LAX, but someone who lives in Dallas or Atlanta or Chicago or San Francisco has many fewer reasonable options.
In smaller markets, there can definitely be logical reasons to choose one airline over the others. In Bellingham, WA (BLI), you can choose from Alaska, Sun Country, or Allegiant. I know which of those I would choose when traveling on business.
For myself, my nearest airport offers the choice of AA, UA, DL, AS, WN, F9, NK, AC, HA, and SY. My job generally involves flying to somewhere in the US every Monday morning and returning either Thursday or Friday evening. Since I go to different places every week and could be in any state, that pretty much eliminates Frontier, Spirit, Hawaiian, Air Canada, and Sun Country. Of the remaining 5, Alaska simply doesn't go where I need to, when I get much east of the Rocky Mountains. Southwest gives me plenty of destinations, but mostly with unusable connection schedules.
That leaves the "big 3". For the times that I fly - typically between 6 and 7am on a Monday, UA has flights departing for SFO, DEN, and EWR. AA has direct flights to LAX and DFW. Delta, on the other hand, has flights to SEA, LAX, SLC, ATL, MSP, and JFK. So, I joined the Delta SkyMiles program because they can get me where I need to go.