TProphet

I'm based in SEA and here's my strategy for paid flights next year.

Primary program/airline: AS/VX - I'll continue to fly Alaska and their partners first where it makes sense. However, as an early stage startup founder lacking cash, I'm price sensitive. This means that I'm most likely to travel with Alaska when fares are competitive (such as to LAX) and when I'm flying on an award. I am as likely to accrue Alaska miles on their international partners as on Alaska themselves.

Secondary program/airline: Delta - Lots of flights to places I go from Seattle and fares that are usually competitive with United and American. I credit to Czech OK Plus for their high accrual rates (1:1 in most cases on discounted fares).

Tertiary program/airline: Southwest - the main sticking points for me are the lack of seat power, regularly delayed flights (their Bay Area hubs are choke points on the West Coast) and the lack of nonstops to southern California. I like Southwest; they're friendly and give free checked bags. Their mileage program is better than other revenue based programs because although you earn at the same low rates, awards are priced much lower.

One-offs: If I need to fly a major airline with a checked bag, I'll go with American and credit to Avios. This will continue as long as Barclays keeps waiving the annual fee on my Aviator Red credit card. Of course, I'll gladly fly American if I'm not paying (award tickets), and that's usually when I am on board with them.

Avoid: I'll continue to go out of my way to avoid United. If you don't have status with them, it's just a miserable experience and they go out of the way to make you feel unwelcome on board. Their operation is also relatively unreliable so... yay? If I do end up on a United flight it'll be for a specific circumstance (such as needing a nonstop to Dulles, or flying on an award) and I'll credit to Singapore.

NOPE: Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant.

What's your 2018 strategy?

Points Scrounger

My travel is almost all out-of-pocket, with RSW and BOS featuring in my plans several times a year. BOS gates a huge negative for AS there. For that and RSW, DL suits me a lot better, with club access via AMEX.

Matched to Mosaic on Jetblue (through next year with challenge). If Mint comes to SEA that'll be a huge deal.

I'll likely be AS gold for 2018, so will use them for the four upgrade codes, as well as short haul coach/Premium.

Bretmd

Will split between Delta and Alaska in 2018. Looks like I will only be MVP next year.

Im not a fan of AA; only have one planned reservation with them and that will be it. Their partnership with AS was the only incentive to fly them.

i already had a bunch of Delta reservations when this AS/AA announcement was made - so I registered to "challenge" to silver for 2018. I'm not expecting fc upgrades from it but it should be an improvement over flying delta as a general member.

I wish I could fly 100% AS but they just don't serve many of the cities I fly to. I also find their pricing to be significantly higher than the competition for many of the routes/times I need to fly.

PVDtoDEL

I live in Seattle and I do quite a bit of travel to smaller cities, so the AA loss hits me pretty hard.

I maintain TK Elite Plus from my international travel, so I do have the option to continue with AS (probably down to MVPG) and use UA to go to smaller cities.

However, I'm also seriously considering switching to DL, because of their nonstop to CVG, better schedule to JFK, and flights to PVD. Looking at the single AS codeshare option SEA-PVD for the few months, I'm not seeing a price under $800 rt and many dates it's coming out over $2.5k. Absolutely unacceptable.

UA is my favorite US airline to fly and AS is a much better FFP than DL, so I am tempted to take my first option. Unfortunately, at some point price and schedule completely overshadow good customer service and a good frequent flyer program. It looks like the loss of AA might put me at that point.

jinglish

I'll be an MVP through the end of the year, but beyond that I'm not positive.

My travel is entirely for leisure and self-funded, and I realized a little while back that I should probably devote less of my income toward airfare until I have my student loans paid off. So between less domestic travel on AS and my use of miles for international trips (I've already cashed in 30k for an AA Y trip to Colombia in February), I'm starting to doubt whether I'll requalify.

But even beyond that, my travel plans are increasingly taking me places where my AS earning opportunities are nonexistent or far more expensive or less convenient than the alternatives. I'm about to start booking for a Baltics/Caucasus trip next year, and while FI and DE provide some decent options for getting to eastern Europe--SEA-KEF-HEL is about $380 for my desired departure date, and Tallinn is a short ferry ride away--from that point on my earning chances are basically nil. No partners fly to GYD, so I'll have to fly QR to LAX and then grab a separate AS or VX ticket back up to SEA. So a two-week trip during which I plan on flying almost 17,000 miles is going to net me about 3529 EQM, most of it on partner metal. Not great. I'm also considering a trip later in the year or in early 2019 that'd involve flying MCT-LON, but while I could take EK at a not-unreasonable price, some preliminary searches show there are cheaper alternatives that take about the same time and could get me into LCY instead of LHR.

So Mileage Plan's limitations are starting to impact me a bit, and I'm starting to consider bouncing carriers via status matches until I can start spending like crazy on air travel again. LH seems to be about as reasonable for a Germany/Poland trip from SEA as an FI out/DE home itinerary, so if I did that in the fall I could status match to UA through the end of 2019. Not that I relish the idea of flying UA, something I still have yet to do, but that'd mean that for 2019 I'd have nonstop options from SEA to FRA, NRT, ICN, and TPE on which I'd actually have some (admittedly very minor) status benefits as a *S. But whether I decide to stick with AS or defect to *A, I'll likely end up matching to DL for 2020. They just have far more international options out SEA, and between earning 1 MQM per mile flown (as opposed to reduced earning rates on all cheap partner Y fares but QF's with AS) and the fact that by that point I'll probably be willing to swing for cheaper J fares every once in a while, I might actually have a good shot at GM.

ucdtim17

?

There is one airport known for delays in the Bay Area and it's the airport where Southwest has their smallest operation of the three

Toshbaf

2016 strategy: AS Mileage Plan (flying DL, AS, some AA, 1 foreign partner)
2017 strategy: AS Mileage Plan (flying DL until 4/30/2017, AS, more AA)

2018 strategy:
primary program: none, I will have no loyalty. Schedule, price, and opinion rules
secondary programs:
AS Mileage Plan (flying AS, rare trips on foreign partner), slightly preferred
DL Skymiles (flying DL, rare trips on foreign partners)
foreign partners on UA MileagePlus (such as SQ, LH, AC)
tertiary programs:
Southwest

4th priority, no travel, if possible
AA (biggest change from 2017 from one of my preferred airlines to avoiding, if possible)
UA itself (see partners, above)
B6
HA

at gunpoint
Spirit, Air Koryo

PDXPremier

My "strategy" for 2018 is the same as 2017....restrict my revenue flying to AS metal and since VX flights count as AS metal, I'll have quite a few more options, but until AS gets things figured out with the clunky VX website, horrible VX call center, and non-existent upgrade possibilities, I'll stick with *real* AS/QX flights.

My travel is generally 100% self-funded so as long as AS keeps Mileage Plan a traditional, mileage-based program, I'm good. Losing AA wasn't a big deal since I try not to earn my elite status on partners since the mileage thresholds are lower on AS metal and my judicious use of the companion certificates really brings my cpm down to a reasonable number.

3ur0tr45h

My strategy: Continue flying nothing but AS/QX

Now if someone else decides to start flying into BLI...
(And G4 does not count as a real airline)

MDtR-Chicago

Based in SFO, MVPG. Unless AS announces enough expanded flying/partnerships to cover where I need to go, I'm probably going to match over to Delta and standardize on them.

Don't like their program but I don't have much of a choice, aside from finally giving up on loyalty.

Brianblanco

100% AS metal. I'm over 50K so far this year and that's all up and down the coast except for 2 east coast flights. Apparently I'm one of the few on FT that is unphased by the AA change. What a treat it is when AS is at your doorstep and meets all your needs! And all my biz travel goes through my AS visa so it's pretty much raining miles for me. I'm definitely thankful.

lalala

Same, basically because my path of least resistance is four non-stops to DC to choose from and some less than ideal, yet workable one stop options.

The rest of my routes --PHL, OAK and MSY are fine on AS. If I needed to fly on AA, I would just book on AA.

Baze

Fixed your post I left after almost 20 years on them. Now with AS.

channa

SFO based.

I usually blow through my status pretty quick. I requalified for 75K back in May on a mix/match of AS and partners and am over 100K YTD so far.

Instead of focusing mostly on AS + partners, some of the + partner stuff will go to UA due to the loss of DL and AA (some of my partner activity is non-AA) as I have backup lifetime status with them.

This will likely mean a fall requalification rather than spring, and net fewer RDMs earned on AS. I suspect if I had less volume and/or I didn't have lifetime UA status, my decision to stay with AS might have been different.

If AS addresses the lack of flights from the Bay Area to AA hubs, which is preventing us from reasonably leveraging any AA codeshares out of here to AA destinations under MileagePlan, some of that UA business might come back.

pharmawalk

I will be avoiding AS as much as possible because they rely on Horizon in my area and Horizon has been really really unreliable for me.