c2krod

i'm a 1K on UA. i fly to Japan (5x/yr) and Europe (2x/yr) and was considering switching my main allegiance to NH from UA. Elite fliers on ANA get access to the Premium Economy seats which are pretty close to Biz Class. On UA it is almost impossible to use systemwide upgrades to get an upgrade, unless you buy a very expensive ticket. If i were elite on ANA, I could be at least assured a decent seat even on an inexpensive ticket. Any thoughts?

joejones

I love ANA, but premium economy is a far cry from business class IMO, especially now that most UA planes have lie-flats. You would probably be stuck in regular economy class on your flights to Europe, and would lose access to economy plus on UA unless you were willing to pay the surcharge for it. The ANA program is also much less generous with mileage for economy class tickets, so you need to study the earning conditions carefully. Some classes earn as little as 50% base mileage, and IIRC some classes will soon earn only 30% or something ridiculously low like that. And if you want to book long-haul awards with ANA miles, you have to pay hefty fuel surcharges.

Rpcfly

Agree with this completely. I was NH Diamond back in 2006 and after I compared the mileage credits and redemption issues (surcharges) decided to go with UA instead.

UA E+ beats NH economy seats hands down. With the amount of traveling you'll be doing you'll be a 1K anyway, or very close to it.

ORDnHKG

NH is a program best for people that buy full fare economy, or paid C class ticket, not for someone that will only buy inexpensive tickets, as other mentioned, the low ratio of earning miles on cheap tickets and high fuel surcharges for award tickets (often several hundred dollars comparing with UA it is $50 or less unless you have many segments).

Also NH's premium economy is NOT close to C class, it is standard premium economy in the market, one less seat per row, slightly more recline, and a few inches of legoom more than Y, everything else exactly same as Y.

The only airline with premium economy close to C class is TK's comfort class or maybe TG to some european markets where it sold 3 class as 2 class for the old 747.

c2krod

thanks for the input. sounds like i should stick with UA. but is there any way to access the NH premium economy seats when flying on a codeshare NH/UA flight on NH metal? i end up on those flights a lot in order to use the Haneda/LAX flights. Any NH experts on there that can tell me what a strategy would be? On my last flight, they were on the verge of giving me PE, but didn't at the last minute. I'm 1K on UA, Star Gold, etc almost got me there. Any other ideas?