Just thought I would pass on my experiences with the various FF programs as it applies to me. Interested in comments and observations from others.

The evaluation is very dependent on one's flying habits and what one looks for from the program and in the service from the airline.

First Continental OnePass. I am a Platinum Elite on CO acquired over the year and hence went through the Silver and Gold phases and can compare.

CO is clearly unmatched for domestic upgrades especially if you fly bargain fares. The upgrades are free and automatic. However, you really need to be at Platinum level to get upgrades most of the time. Silver is pretty much useless for upgrades unless you fly an almost empty flight. Even at platinum level it is not 100% guaranteed for some routes unless you pay full fare in which case it is automatic.

CO uses some rules on when they release the first class seats. For most routes, you get upgrades on the published schedule for different elite levels. On some routes, the last two or four first class seats are not released until the last day. To their credit, they almost always fill up the first class seats by the time the flight leaves.

Within each level, your upgrade chances appear to be based on fare paid and not on how early you booked so if you fly on cheap fares, upgrades are not guaranteed for the last one or two seats available even at Platinum levels. CO flies a lot of 737s on their routes and so do not have too many first class seats on some routes.

When you get to international travel, however, CO elite levels are pretty much useless for anything other than priority checking-in and boarding and there it does not matter which level you are at, of course. There are no complementary upgrades for trans-atlantic flights. Even mileage upgrades are closely guarded and almost impossible to get except for full fares. I have been denied an upgraded seat on the day of the flight even though mileage had been deducted from my account for the upgrade and there were empty seats. They will rather fly with empty seats than have the "riff-raff" occupying them with miles. Mileage upgrades are not available for most fares and the lowest upradeable fare if you were to find a flight with upgradeable seats (very rare except for a few weeks in late fall and early autumn) is rather high. Award seats are also extremely difficult to come by. The result is that it is very easy to acquire miles on CO but very difficult to actually use them for anything (except perhaps charities). CO does have arguably the best business class section for overseas travel amongst the US carriers.

CO has no useful alliances internationally and provides no free business lounge privileges for international flights on coach class at any Elite level. This alone is enough to take them out of contention for frequent international travellers.

The service from CO has been consistently better than other airlines. One shortfall in their program design is that there is very little incentive to acquire more miles and fly CO after reaching Platinum level (given that CO miles are pretty much useless) unless the travel is for free upgrades on domestic flights.

Elite status on CO allows use of those privileges on NW but the less said about NW the better. It is not an airline I would choose to fly.

Next United. I am at Premier Executive level. Just Premier is good enough for the priority boarding and check-in, however the Premier Executive level has an important benefit for international travel. It puts you in the Star Alliance Gold level which brings with it unlimited business lounge privileges at most airports (honored by any of the star alliance partners regardless of which star alliance partner you are flying with). This benefit is particulary useful in these days of mandated early check-ins and also if you do a number of connecting flights. There is also extra baggage allowance (useful with European carrier travel where baggage limits are more strictly enforced otherwise). In addition, currently any paid miles on any of the Star Alliance partner counts towards your United Elite status!

Domestic complementary upgrades are not as easy or frequent as with CO and there are no complementary upgrades for overseas travel like most airlines. However, getting mileage upgrades even on international travel is much easier than with CO and at a much lower cost. For example, I got a round trip business class mileage upgrade for EWR-HKG trip on a $925 fare on United for travel in February. The lowest upgradeable fare on CO was $1400+. I have also obtained domestic awards on United without having to book months in advance unlike CO. The service on United can be rather unpredictable and the airline has gone through some really bad times but it has become a bit tolerable at the moment. The overseas business class is not as good as CO.

Finally American. I was comped a Platinum level based on my United level. I had zero miles on American before this. In the 9000 actual miles of trips I did as a result of this, the service was so uniformly and consistently bad on AA that I sent back the platinum membership and asked to be removed from the AAadvantage program. I cannot believe anyone that has flown other airlines continue to fly AA unless they have no choice (e.g., South American routes). I have no experience with upgrades because of this short experience. The upgrade rules do not appear to be as convenient as CO for domestic travel.

AA platinum gives you Saphire status in One World which is not as useful an alliance as Star Alliance but does give free business lounge privileges on international travel if you can find a One World business lounge (e.g., BA). Transatlantic flights on BA do not accrue miles on AAdvantage(!) let alone count towards Elite status. I fully support the "AA/BA, no way" campaign. The reduction in competition for a carrier with that bad a service is not good. BA while not one of the best airlines is a cut above AA in service.

Unfortunately, AA is using the current situation (i.e., enhanced security) to justify and continue its bad service. I have seen ground personnel threatening to call security ("you will be escorted off the flight") to shut up people complaining at the poor service to start with. They are justifying "denied boarding" for heavy over booking on security procedures. I was denied boarding although I was two hours early for "security restrictions that require 3 hour prior to boarding to check in". Nonsense. While FAA profiling appears random for extra security checks, the discretionary selection by ground crew appear to be quite biased against colored skin. On one of the flights, it was rather obvious to everyone that all blacks, hispanics and other non-whites were selected for additional baggage check while almost all of the whites went through without additional checks. One black gentleman that observed this loudly was admonished with "you are welcome not to fly on this flight"! To think us taxpayers are bailing out this airline!

I don't have elite level experience with any other airline.

Cheers and happy flying in the coming year...