Originally Posted by
smxflyer
My flying to BHM will be likely 1-2x per month. I'll likely fly to one of those California destinations once every 2 months. Then I have things like an MCO December trip where DL has nonstop and UA would require a connection along with a pending PHL trip.
It definitely depends on your desires from having status and what the relative tradeoffs will be. A four-hour connecting solution to go 396 miles is going to be absolutely brutal to do twice-monthly on either airline (I would almost consider driving although that seems a lot harder than the SF-LA trip), but I would tend to agree with
jhayes_1780 that a connection is a connection which doesn't make DL
that much better. Some days you're going to misconnect and you're going to have to live with that.
But if you pick DL for the schedule to BHM, how are you going to get to SBP? How will that impact your status overall? Does it make sense to split your business by price and schedule even if it doesn't get you a 50k tier (which would be a real hit)? It's definitely worth considering how you feel about all those options.