Originally Posted by asearchforfirst
What about the others? Continental, Northwest, American, Delta? Can someone just give me a two sentence description of the program, e.g. how you access first class (coupons or unlimited upgrades), whetehr they fly a lot of regional jet routes out of WAS, and whether people have decent success getting upgraded. yur comments are greatly appreciated.
Well, out of those three, American uses the coupon/sticker system (except it lacks E+ if you don't upgrade), while Continental, Northwest and Delta all offer complimentary upgrades to ALL elites anytime there is space (theoretically).
Of the three, Continental probably flies the most RJ's out of this area (they only fly RJ's from IAD; all their BWI-EWR and BWI-CLE service is on RJ's, all of their DCA-CLE is on RJ's, and some of their DCA-EWR is on RJ's. They even have one DCA-IAH on an RJ!)
Delta runs a few RJ's out of BWI and DCA, and a bit more out of IAD, but a lot of these are point-to-point; the vast majority of their hub flights out of this area are on mainline jets.
Northwest also flies only a few RJ's. Then again, they have very few flights out of the DC area (basically to their hubs plus a couple of point-to-point to IND/GRR/etc) so although their service is all mainline, it's not as extensive.
Of these three, I have never been an elite on Delta so I can't say how the upgrading goes there. I am a NW elite which allows me access to upgrades on NW and CO. So far I am at about 50% success for flights on NW (higher success rate out of BWI than DCA, actually) and have had no luck at all on CO (0 for 2).