Have you signed up for all the codes in the US Bonus Code Thread? If you do, CP should be a gimmie this year for you and you can then concentrate on UA and getting 1K.

The changes at US and how they will affect you are something only you know. For instance, I could care less about the "use it or lose it" changes ... they would never affect me. I've only cancelled a couple of tickets on US, and since they're so cheap if I had lost them, so be it ... I knew the risk going in (one of them was like $130 ... after the $100 change fee, that's $30 in value basically ... the other was 9/11 related, so that's another story anyway).

For me, upgrades are the single most important aspect of the program, which is in affect unchanged. I should earn CP this year, which I'll have through 2/29/2004 ... then hopefully if US follows previous patterns they'll only drop me one level per year, which means I'd be Gold through 2/28/2005 and Silver through 2/28/2006. Usually Silver would be problematic, but if these new changes do stay in affect through then, the ranks of elites will be significantly thinned by then anyway, so that will not be a problem for upgrading anyway and even Silvers should be able to upgrade a significant amount of the time. Of course, in actuality I expect that either all the carriers will follow this move by then or US Airways will have ditched it.

Now, if you have a problem with the "use it or lose it" policy like many others seem to have, that's a whole different story.