A terrific FT success story! Congrats and have a great trip, quartney!

You're welcome. Enjoy the flight and your time in Hawaii.

flight recap:

Because of weather, no flights were going into DFW on our departure date. American switched us to Delta/NWA flights the following day *and* got us a hotel room that night. Which surprised us, since I didn't think Airlines gave out hotel vouchers due to weather.

Our newly-scheduled flights got us in to Hawaii only 1 hour later. We traveled 1st-class to ATL and then from ATL to HNL. We were on NWA's 747-400 and WOW was it nice in 1st class. The seats were awesome, we loved the individual tv sets with new movies, and the flight attendants were first-rate, as well.

Coming home, we found out a few hours before departure that AA had accidentally cancelled our return flights when they re-routed us with Delta/NWA on the outbound flight. Thirty minutes on the phone with AA and we got our flights rescheduled.

First class on AA's 757 was a disappointment after flying in the 747-400. While I appreciate AA's customer service, I'm considering switching FF credit cards to Delta.

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

From the sounds of it you don't fly F that often, if ever (neither do I FWIW), so picking a FF program based on a rarely used incentive seems like disaster from my point of view.

I've been an AAdvantage member for 11 years and have used my rewards for 1 coach ticket in the US and 2 F tickets to Hawaii. You're right that I don't fly F often and I rarely use *any* incentives ... so why not get a great incentive on those rare occasions?

edited to add: Delta/NWA flies out of my home airport and American does not. Makes more sense to switch for that reason, too.

I don't understand your post: OP seems pretty rational to me. He/she learned that there's a drastic difference on how much the same amount of miles buys you, and he/she's going to the program that gives him/her the best value for his/her next free trip to Hawaii.

I agree. It sounds like a reasonable and well-thought-out plan to me as well, without a whole lot of need for discussion. Imagine if everyone who want to choose one program over another felt the need to tell everyone about it and discuss it at length :)

Different plans work for different people, for a variety of reasons and those who have a favorite are not well-served by trying to "defend" those plans to others, just as those opting for different plans have little need to explain themselves to others.

I'm often surprised by the number of people who come here to try and justify why this plan doesn't work for them (some are much more harsh that that) and that they are going to plan XYZ instead. I'm sure the same happens on other forums as well. People should make their choices based on what works for them, without caring what others think. Likely, most here don't care much about such decisions of others, nor should they,IMO.

To each his/her own.

Cheers.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61i)

Also probably important to note a few things to aid in your decision:
The NW seats you had on the 747 are probably inferior to AA's 777 F seat (the flagship suite) and IMHO are also inferior to AA's NGBC seat on the 767 and in J on the 777.
NW/DL is about to have a bunch of 757's moving about. I'd look for a bunch more 757 seats to HNL.
You were rerouted in to apaid seat....I have a metric ton of NW/DL miles in both programs and have found AA to be about 18 orders of magnitude easier to redeem.

Of course YMMV, but be careful. I spent almost 8 years flying the wrong airlines after a situation almost identical to yours. I leanred that one flight a pattern does not make....and pick carefully.

American award availability is reputed to be much better than Delta/NWA. If you make this switch, it would be a good idea to plan future award trips much further in advance. While 3 months in advance for a June trip to Hawaii was difficult on AA, it would probably be impossible on DL/NW.

Just FYI: The Northwest F seats on the 744 you flew are inferior compared to the F seats on the 763 you were supposed to fly on.

It does not make sense to compare an international 747-400 to a domestic 757-200.

Greetings:

This talk of seats on NW-DL v. AA in FC, if comparing apples to apples (i.e. internationally equipped bird to internationally equipped bird), is a really big YMMV situation. Being both a NW PE and AA EXP and having flown both down to HNL in the last year, think I can speak on this one and here is the tale of the tape as with respect to hard product only:

NW:
NW-DL on the 747 out of ATL and NW out of MSP on the A333. It is the same Business Elite/World Business Class (in old NW speak) seat FWIW.

NW-DL birds have 60 inches of pitch with a 176 degree recline lie flat seat. Working AVOD at the seat with about about a 10 inch screen. Seats vary in width from 20 inches to 20.25 inches.

AA:

AA is the 763 out of DFW and/or LAX.

AA birds have 58-60 inches of pitch and are "lie flat" (you can get them pretty horizontal if you manipulate the settings but takes some work). There is no AVOD to HNL on the 763 (there is of course AVOD to "international destinations" on the 763). Seat width is only 18.5 inches.

For just hard product, IHMO, I prefer NW-DL with AVOD and greater pitch.

Now as to food, printed menus and the like, DL-NW, as documented on the NW board has scaled back service levels (no more menus, meaningful meal choices etc.). AA has printed menus.

All in all it is pretty close.

Finally, as to award availability, need to be careful on this one, as NW-DL tends to start releasing a good deal of inventory close in. Taking a look at July, there is inventory at saver levels for FC every week departure and return. Also note, I did not log in as an NW PE where we get expanded inventory as EXP might on AA.

Hope folks find this useful.

EDIT TO ADD: Not going to address ability to use stickers, complimentary nature of upgrades on AA to mileage/SWU upgrade only on higher fares only on NW-DL, and/or AA FAs v. NW-DL FAs and the like. All of that probably swings AA's way IHMO.

Safe Travels

It requires no manipulation. There is one button that automatically puts the seat to a 180 lie-flat position.

And it does have AVOD, with Bose-noise canceling headsets to boot. Do you really think AA would offer a new biz product absent AVOD? That's crazy. It's stupid enough they keep installing new coach products absent AVOD.

Kind of confused how an EXP'er would miss these two obvious elements of AA's 763 J service unless you flew the old J product back in 2007.

I think you misread me. My original post said "if going to the islands" as I was responding to flying to Hawaii and HNL in particular. (I have now edited to say HNL because that is what this discussion was about).

There is no true "J" service on this route, but more of an "enhanced F service." :D The portable AVOD player and the BOSE headphones are not supplied. You are of course correct that they are when flying "internationally" (i.e. LHR, FRA, etc). I never said that it was not. I was just on the 763 to DFW from HNL and in reverse.

It is also documented on FT (in this case correctly) that the 763 to HNL does not feature the portable IFE: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...w-hnl-ogg.html

As to the "sleep" position, you are correct that there is a "sleep" button, used it myself once or twice :D. "manipulation" was a strong word. The sleep button has two settings, so one needs to keep it pushed in. I tend to tinker with it to get the best "lie flat" position possible.

Again, no disrespect to AA or the route, I think it is great, and it is a very nice experience to the islands!! Apologize for the confusion if any, and thanks for the great debate! Made me go back do some searches and think about things to verify! I have also clarified my original post to restrict the discussion to flights on the 763 to HNL.

Safe Travels.

Wow, really? How stupid of AA. They take the portable IFE units out on Miami trans-cons with the 763, but not HNL.

My portable 10" DVD player (or 17" if I take my portable computer) has much better selection of movies and shows, because I bring what I like. Also makes the front of MD-80s quite good domestically.

The 10" DVD player also fits on half the tray table, so I can watch while I eat too. :)

Steve