Do we actually know that the UA and DL mergers led to considerably more elites per flight? How do we know that?

I guess I'm not saying that the AA merger led to fewer elites per flight. I think I'm merely stating that US seemed to have less than some other airlines (including pre-merger AA), so perhaps the impact on a per-flight basis won't be an issue.

And of course I have no real data either: merely the observation that I got a lot of upgrades as an AA Gold on US metal. (Perhaps a flawed proxy for elite load, I know...)

Yup. I've flown domestic F on each of pmAA, pmUS, post-CO-merge UA and post-NW-merge DL in the past few years, and my least favorite experiences have all been on AA.

I can tell you right now that the reason I'm status-matching to DL in Q4 is simply that my ~80k miles/year (which is what I tend to hit naturally; made CP/EXP the last two years by stretching things a bit in order to guarantee a safe merger year) will get more value. Which is to say, any value at all.

And it's not just the F seats, though I've had the "pleasure" of flying some truly ancient-looking planes on AA since the merge. It's the entire attitude of pmAA, that 1977's Barcalounger and 1977's FA (who's gotten to the top of the seniority list without ever serving a PDB to a passenger) and 1907's quality of weather forecasting and handling somehow make a super ultra premium luxury world-class experience that only the elitest of the elitest of the elite mega-super-high-value flyers should get, and only maybe then. So the flying I do every year is going to go to DL, which provides actual benefits instead of saying "here's some stickers, kid, come back when you're a real flyer".

I'll also say that it looks to me as if Delta is now pursuing some of the strategy pmUS used to have in my part of the country: when UA downgauged to mostly tiny CRJs and Dash 8s -- I've flown a CRJ SFO-MCI, and never want to have that experience again -- US was flying A320s and seemed to actually want to compete for midwestern business travelers. AA's old guard, of course, have the same attitude as UA, where if you're not a top-tier premium destination you're not worth sending mainline service (and though I don't have old schedules to check against, it seems like there are more CR9s in MCI than there used to be, especially MCI-PHX). But DL has quietly become the highest-volume legacy carrier out of MCI, almost all of it is mainline service, and they're all the way up to running twice-daily daily 757s here while making enough money to lavish it on their employees (which is how you know an airline is doing well -- if they can't find an excuse to screw their unions, they must be running out of diving space in their executive money bins).

Lets face it most people flying more than 25K miles a year are doing so out of need, primarily for work. Whether you are sitting in a Y seat or an F seat you are being sent somewhere to do a job. Work being work, you are highly likely going to fly direct, not DFW/MCI/ORD/MSP simply to rack up miles. MRs are a sliver of elites. So really with 3, or 4 legacies including WN, there is less motivation to please low spend and/or elites flying less than 100K miles a year. In other words, there is less motivation to reward lower spend FFs.

Be sure to let us know how your upgrade percentages fare on DL... over the last five years of lurking in the DL board, my crystal ball says 'not good.' :-/ But, hey, at least C+ gives you free food and drink.

I (respectfully of course) disagree. I've been a UA elite since 2007 and i've only been on AA for the last 1.5 years and i have had a far better experience flying F on AA than i ever have on UA. While UA has clearly made improvements to their catering to come up to a higher level, its too little, too late. However, i have seen that DL does have a superior catering product to AA. Their Frequent Flier Program leaves a lot to be desired however and Skyteam is not as competitive of an airline alliance as Oneworld or Star. (you can't book first class awards on many skyteam partners because DL itself does not have intl F).

What exactly is wrong with charging stickers for upgrades? I think it ruins the exclusiveness of first class when you hand out free upgrades like candy. Notice how no other premium airline in the world does that. It also leaves open some seats for EPs who may buy last minute fares inside their upgrade window and not lose it out to PLTs or GLDs. But of course a non-EP would complain about sticker upgrades. Check out the UA board, you have even 1Ks who are not getting confirmed upgrades while most EXPs here report a high success percentage. 1K is pretty much nothing at UA these days, if you want any perks its Global Services or bust. Its funny because if you're a global services on UA you can still be stuck flying coach (i've seen it) and you still dont get a free item off the ala carte menu.

Nothing wrong with stickers at all. I quite like them as it allows lower tier elites the opportunity to upgrade. That said though, those were acceptable at a time when AA's F product was a step above the competition. That is no longer the case and AA F is worth little more than a complimentary upgrade.

I personally don't care about the upgrade percentages at DL, UA, or AA for that matter. Both DL and UA sell F so cheap it often winds up cheaper than buying Y on AA and buying stickers to upgrade. If the AA product was at all valuable to me, this wouldn't be a problem but at this point the only thing AA offers me over DL or UA is AAdvantage. Once that is devalued, I would have a lot of trouble finding value in AA.

Delta has become a really wealthy airline. Everything from the success of their refinery to the success of their fleet. But I do caution your optimism that the grass is always greener. Don't think that there haven't been consequences for frequent flyers. The comments about the length of upgrade lists, and overcrowded lounges, are all too true.

There's nothing really exclusive about domestic "first" class. Other airlines around the world don't even have the concept of a regional equivalent. So paying more for what continues to be less of an experience rubs many against the grain. You regularly now can get better food in the airport than what you get in domestic first, for much less than the price of upgrade stickers.

The problem here is the presumption that AA is a "premium airline". There are no "premium airlines" based in the United States, period. Given the nature of the market here, it is unlikely that there ever will be one. And in Europe, the domestic and intra-EU flights are actually worse in several ways than they are here; only the ME3 and a couple of the more prosperous Asian carriers can really claim to be "premium" anymore, and I have my doubts as to how long they can keep it up.

So it's time to let go of the presumption that AA offers some head-and-shoulders "premium" over other US-based carriers. At which point there is simply nothing at all to justify structuring AAdvantage to cater exclusively to the most elite high-value customers. I'm willing to accept that the highest-of-the-high-end experience is slightly worse on DL, in exchange for the mid-tier experience being on average better than AA.

And frankly, it doesn't take much to have a better mid-tier experience than AA right now: as I've been saying since we got the news of the merge-year program, AAdvantage's benefits are far too top-heavy. UA and DL both incrementally introduce benefits as you work your way up, and cause the ones you already had to get better with each tier. So did pmUS. AA withholds practically every benefit up until the moment you hit EXP and suddenly get everything (until that point you only get MCE and bonus RDM, which in turn devalues the program since RDM are a heavily inflationary currency). That's a recipe for being competitive in a comparatively tiny slice of the overall airline market in the US, and the only way people can come up with to support it is to go mass-downgauging and yield-chasing. And look how well that worked out for UA. But if you really want to try it, I hear Jeffy's looking for work...

Meanwhile, DL and WN are flying mainline into places that make the AA old guard reach for the smelling salts and collapse onto the fainting couch (Heavens! Just thinking about the O&D numbers gives me the vapors!), running revenue-based FFPs (and in WN's case, without even pretending to have domestic F), and making money hand over fist doing it. Because it turns out there's a good-sized segment of weekday warriors in smaller markets who'll reliably put in 50k or 75k miles a year and don't need a pretend-premium experience, just decent value for money. Since AA refuses to provide that, we can predict where those flyers are going to go.

Having flown a bit of F this year on AA, US, UA, and a couple different UX operators, I can barely tell the difference between any of them.

It's a bigger seat, grumpy service, and no soft product to speak of. The only reason I can't complain is because I'm a low-tier elite happy to have the seat at all.

Do people actually consider narrowbody domestic F on Delta to be good? :confused: I guess I just assumed it would be like the others...with any differentiation coming from whichever carrier had done the most recent interior retrofit on their long-haul aircraft.

No, however compared with these new crAAp A319s, A321s, and 737s coming online throughout the AA and US fleets, I have found myself preferring DLs 757, MD-88, and MD-90 equipment. Not to mention UA's international 757s which routinely operate MCO-EWR.

I guess what I miss most when not flying AA are the MIA and DFW Centurion Lounges which are both items that AA ironically doesn't want to exist.

Like UA/AA, you'll get a meal for flights over 900 miles during meal times so just the snack basket on flights 1:30-4:00pm and flights after 8 pm although UA recently lowered the threshold down to 800 miles but won't serve a meal on flights less than 1500 miles on flights departing between 1:30-4:00 pm. However, Delta you'll have a mini bottle of water and a blanket/pillow at your seat on every domestic flight. Also full PDB are standard operating procedure. Operationally, DL crushes everyone save for Alaska Airlines/Hawaiian Airlines. Also, DL tends to have the nicer/friendlier FAs. DL is in the midst of a major domestic aircraft refit. The domestic 767s are crappy but those are on the way out. If you fly out on a 757, it could be one of ten, yes ten, configurations. The 739ER is hated because Delta really packed in the seats. The rest of the fleet should be fine.

Overall airline quality, network, hard/soft product, service, etc., AA and DL are about the same, I like AA better actually.

Pricing I like AA better, as you can get many more discounted fares, both domestic and international, both coach and business.

FFPs, Delta is a big fat 0, and AA is just amazing, night and day basically. It is literally the worst vs. the best FFP in the world. And this matters hugely.

I find that domestically it really depends on what routes you fly. I usually fly a *A hub to *A hub (YYZ-SFO) and the lowest AA and DL fares are almost always exactly the same, with DL having much lower F fares

Yes, a lot of these would depending on individual factors and needs, so things will vary substantially for each person. But the international (except US) coach and business fares out of YYZ on AA are unbeatable.

Riding in F is the most important elite benefit to me -- and yes, DL's upgrade percentages are terrible. That being said, I'm still looking at DL for next year; here's why:

• The cost of buying up to (guaranteed) F on DL is often roughly equivalent to the cost of a (non-guaranteed) sticker upgrade on AA.
• Buying up to F on DL gets me bonus MQM; a sticker upgrade on AA does not.
• Even if not upgrading, a 1.0EQP fare on AA is often the same as a discount F fare on DL
• Delta's premium class bonus MQMs aren't canceled out by reduced earnings on lower fares
• Delta rolls over MQMs, which is helpful for someone like me with variable earnings
• I can qualify for DL Plat, but AA EXP is largely out of my reach.

All the costs are IME; obviously they may not hold for other people's routes (or cities of origin).

I do like AA's program better for things other than upgrades. If AA got rid of the complexity of EQP in favor of an EQM bonus like everyone else, I would probably be much less inclined to jump ship.