<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by IMStill4Travel:
Jon..I fly significantly more than the 100K needed for EXP...it's almost exclusively domestic though...maybe 1 or 2 trips to Europe annually for business...then. wherever the vacations may take me. The domestic upgrades are what does it for me...sometimes the company ponies-up for the full Y...which would mean auto-upgrade if I were EXP...but there are many times where it's not full Y...and my "arse" would be sitting in steerage.
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But only by choice, as an EXP you'll get upgraded almost 100% of the time-- but you'll have to pay for the upgrade w/ "stickers." Exclusive of course of the stickers you earn
and the
16 o/w system-wide upgrades you'll earn as a first year EXP. Used on transcons (and of course to Europe) the $$ evens out pretty quickly by some accounts. (
Landspeed did an excellent analysis here once)
Well, we've done the math together too many times-- as a pretty much exclusively domestic flyer, able to reach CO Plat even with the new restrictions, etc. your case to stick with CO for your needs is still very persuasive, no question. This year I've flown over 100,000 miles International alone and obviously we couldn't be in two, more different, boats.
I do however think you should try AA EXP one year (as you were mulling in the AA post)-- you don't have much to lose, since you fly a ton and I think you'd be very hard pressed to find many (any?) folks who left CO Plat for AA EXP who aren't very, very pleased with their decision. Then again maybe the reverse is true as well.