As an internal auditor, my travel season begins today and goes through December. Last year, I flew AA, CO, and DL. As you can imagine, I ended up wih no elite status and miles scattered among the 3 airlines. This year, I'd like to take a better approach. Here's a little background of how often I travel and where I will travel this year if it aids in giving me some advice.

I typically travel every other week flying out Monday and returning on Friday. (We don't travel during holiday weeks). My home airport is MOB. After flying all 3 airlines, I like CO since my Plat. Amex gives me free internet in the PC; not only that, I've had better service out of them. My priority went from AA (until they screwed me over last year) to either DL or CO. We are supposed to book the most economically feasible yet convenient fares, so I typically end up with a discounted coach fare. We book travel 1 week in advance, so sometimes I can score a full fare ticket. I always book my CO tickets on continental.com when I use them to ensure I get the MQM bonus for deeply discounted tickets. My major problem is that we only travel domestically, meaning its almost impossible to score elite status doing these little 500 and 1k mile stints as opposed to say, one RT to HKG and back.

Here's a list of my planned destinations for the year. I visit each location once unless otherwise specified.

DAL, MCI, BRO, PHI, MKE, ORD, SNA, CLE, IAH, PHX, GBO, OKC, MCO, EWR (DAL twice as well as SNA twice).

That's my tentative schedule. The only disadvantages I see with going CO over DL are that 1. going to east coast destinations are not feasible time-wise (although they are mileage wise). 2. I hear it's almost impossible to get upgrades on CO unless you're Platinum.

I've done some reading and research but maybe some of you guys can give me some hints more tailored to my flight plans and scheduling since everyone's is different. I'm still leaning toward CO for loyalty (since we usually use them for our west coast flights). At times, if I'm on a strict schedule, I'd have to use other airlines if nothing is available on CO. Any ideas other than "try to fly CO as much as you can?" I'm thinking maybe allocate DL miles to CO when I have to fly them? Anything else I might try?

Thanks!