Originally Posted by guv1976

There was a big change announced earlier this year re: the AAdvantage frequent-flyer program. As you may have heard, AAdvantage now uses a "Loyalty Points" scheme for determining status, so base miles earned from hotel stays, car rentals, co-branded credit-card spend, AAdvantage Dining, AAdvantage e-shopping, etc., all count towards attaining status. The upside of that is that you can attain status more quickly (and maybe even higher status than you might otherwise attain) depending on how much of those other earnings you can garner. The downside is that everybody else in the AAdvantage program can do so too.

AA has partnerships with both Alaska and JetBlue, so there are plenty of opportunities for earning AAdvantage LPs in the NYC and BOS areas. But Delta is also very strong in NYC and BOS.

I suggest that you take a look at what level of status you could likely attain through both AA and DL. Also do some dummy award searches on aa.com and delta.com to get an idea of how many miles each program might charge for redemptions you might actually make.