Originally Posted by
AAdamE
So I know the grass is not always greener on the other side, and every airline has it's issues, but I am an AA loyalist based out of ORD thinking about jumping on the United bandwagon. For starters, the status free match makes it really easy to start off with United silver. I typically have enough personal travel to hit the bottom two rungs of any airline loyalty program, and higher if I have business travel - but that looks out of reach for a while. I only picked AA over United originally because I had the AA credit card since college and honestly the free drinks in Y MCE which are gone and probably will never come back. I have like four AMEX cards with Airline Incidental re-imbursement - so I could just buy the drinks in UA Y using those credits. The last straw was seeing article after article about how UA cares about their domestic hard product unlike AA who just keeps taking out IFE.
So my question is - are there any former AA loyalists, and if so what are the differences you notice - bonus points for anyone out of ORD. Seems like I need to request the match by 9/3.
UA is a more functional airline right now - more reliable, much better app and IT overall. While it's not notable for outstanding service at the gate or inflight, IME you're more likely to experience truly unpleasant service on AA. UA also seems to attract a more professional, law-abiding customer base, at least here on the west coast. They also haven't torturized their domestic cabins to the same extent as AA, and as Gold or Silver, you'd likely be able to score an E+ seat on most if not all flights.
I was originally driven away from UA by their ridiculous PQP qualification scheme, and you might want to take a look at that to see how it squares with your travel patterns. Though who knows if they'll ever return fully to the published standards. Value of the frequent flyer miles is also low and dropping, if that's important to you.