Originally Posted by
guv1976
How much cash do you expect to spend on airfare during a year? That's become a big factor in achieving status these days.
If you're based in NYC and prefer not to fly out of EWR, then you're really looking at AA or DL -- or one of their alliance partners -- if you will be primarily flying internationally.
The nice thing about AA is that you can earn LP with non-flying spend. The hotel stays are particularly lucrative if you are not also chasing hotel status.
DL is going to require a lot of spend. They are going to roll back some of their changes but I'm guessing that it's still going to be pretty brutal.
Even if willing to fly out of EWR, UA has pretty high spend requirements. If not spending OPM I would suggest AA and augment with hotel stays and other partners. If you are ok with being a hotel free agent, you can just book all your hotel stays through AA's hotel booking engine, get status that way, and use the miles to fly everywhere. It saves a lot of money.
When spending OPM, I found UA to be good. They were my go-to when flying to the EU for work from SFO (you could do the same from EWR, I assume) and they were good to Asia as well.