Flying Other Airlines
 

For those of you who are dedicated Elite Flyers with CO with lots of flights and miles why do you fly other airlines for a certain trip other then CO. Is it you got a better fare, or maybe CO (including partners) does not fly the route, or that they do not offer the time of day you need to go.
I flew AA in December MIA-MSY less then $100.00, CO was charging more then $300.00 and not very direct to go FLL/MIA-IAH-MSY. I am going CLE-FLL this weekend $250.00 RT, CO was charging $450.00 and not alot of flight choices at that price. I only need 2 more segements for a free roundtrip on WN on my Rapid Rewords account.
Also, besides CO, what other frequent flyer programs do you belong too. I actually have accounts with most deomestic airlines, just frew miles the last
10-20 years.

i'm still learning the mile accumulating + status maintenance game. my work will probably net me in the neighborhood of around 40k miles this year and the rest of the EQMs will be earned on my own dime. i stick w/ CO because of 1) the EWR >< HKG routing and that 2) work brings me to TX a lot. as DC isn't really a finance hub, my dream of a direct WAS >< HKG route will likely never come into existence, hence EWR is not a bad option. i also detest ORD so no UA for now for IAD >>> ORD >>> HKG.

i think the choices come down to routing, cost, and eqm earning (and to a slightly lesser extent good pitch seats). i'm fortunate to be in the greater DC area because i have access to UA's hub at IAD and then US out of DCA. as DCA has no CO transcons, IAD provides a great alternative. as the merger progresses, i may take more flights out of there. IAD also has some nice routings to South American destinations (EZE, GIG) that i plan on taking in the future. additionally, with E+ (which hopefully stays), i'm under less pressure to look for the BF UGs. i was well trained in flying long haul North America to Asia routes in Y over the years prior to becoming slightly more travel savvy, so 10-ish hrs in E+ is more than bearable. i'm not mr. moneybags so intercontinental fares in Business or F are cost prohibitive!

for short jumps, i may take US a lot more. because of family, i end up going up to CLE a lot and the DCA >< CLE route pricing can get quite obnoxious. for an upcoming trip up there, i opted for a 2 segment "work friendly" outbound departure time routing on US that nets 2K eqms, which was $200 cheaper than the direct routing departing at a similar time on CO. also, the R/T on the DCA >< BOS route direct can be had for just a touch over $100 a/i as opposed to CO's fares that are pricing at $520 no tax/fees abt 2 months out.

I'm in College Station, TX, and we have two choices here: CO or AAnother AAirline. So I'm a continental gal.

I try to fly out of CLL for most of my trips, unless the price from IAH or AUS is significantly less expensive. Both of those airports are a hair under 2 hours from me. The last thing I want to do after flying across the country -- or the world -- is tack on a two-hour drive.

So for me, it's practicality. CO has maybe a half dozen flights out of CLL each day. AAnother AAirline has only three.

Nothing wrong with flying another airline every now and then. It keeps you abreast of OAL offerings and you can see how your carrier COmpares.

Sure, you may not get the lavish service you've grown accustomed to on CO, but maybe after a few trips on another carrier, you'll be longing to swipe your credit card for DirecTV in Y or a mojito in F. ;)

Ah, I love CLL - cheap parking, two gates, and the people checking you in also loading your bags.

I typically fly CO but since the merger I have dibbled towards UA. So far I have been pleasantly surprised: E+, UDU as a plat, etc. I really don't mind if I have to book a flight on UA. I cannot think of anything to complain about.

The real test is when I go to TLV on DL (group tour booked the trip.) I'm kind of disappointed that it wasn't with *alliance, but it gives me an opportunity to try something new. Kind of exciting. It'll be more exciting of my status match goes through!

Well said. Got status matched to Plat by DL and tried them out last week LGA-ORD.
Without getting into the whole "which program is better debate" it was actually a surprisingly pleasant experience which showed me that CO is not the be all, end all.

No it really isn't anymore. Did the same status match and so far have been very impressed with DL.

I'm a EWR captive, so there's virtually no EWR-> routing that someone flies but not CO. I've done EWR-DFW on AAnother airline just because of better flight times, but that's not really a good example since I have lifetime gold on that airline (from before I moved to NJ). No issues with the service, but too infrequent to draw any conclusions.

This thread is very timely. This morning, for the first time in about 12 years, I made reservations on an airline that wasn't CO or a CO alliance partner. Getting from New York to Martha's Vineyard is always a hassle and expensive. USAirways can be almost $700RT in the summer. I've taken CO or Amtrak to Boston and flown CapeAir down to the VIneyard (well that's not a partner but at 9 seats who's counting). I've flown CO to Providence and connected with the ferry from New Bedford. In the long distant past, Delta and NY Air flew jets to the Vineyard. FOr a year or so, CO flew a commuter plane. Now Jet Blue is flying a daily nonstop jet from Kennedy. So, feeling a little guilty, I made 3 round trip reservations for the summer.

Get a seat in the back half of the plane for 33" pitch instead of the 32" they offer in the front. @:-) TrueBlue won't get you much in value for cheap flights but it can eventually if you pay a tiny bit of attention to it.

I fly different airlines all the time. When the flight is cheaper, better timing, actually to the destination I want to go or even just for the cooler lines. Best I can tell I flew on 21 different carriers last year and I've already been on 4 different carriers this year. Limiting yourself to only flying one just for the miles is quite often an unwise investment.

Corporate travel requires me to fly on the cheapest flights, unless I have a specific reason. I can usually make CO work ("the others aren't at the right time," etc). However, I do fly other *A carriers when it's cheaper or I can add on more miles. For example, I go to the midwest a lot (CLE/IND/CMH/DAY/DTW/FWA are all feasible airports). CO is very expensive on those routs, but I can go IAH-CLT-xxx for much less, and get more miles, too. Also, when I needed to go to DTW a few months ago, I went IAH-PHX-CLT-DTW (US) to rack up the miles at a similar price.

The easy answer: Whatever program I can easily get miles in. Lately, that had been US because of Avis bonuses, but I've also used DL for that in the past. I also have UA, AA, BA and Southwest accounts, thanks to lucrative credit card promos. OH, and ANA for reward searches.

I've been with AA many years now but recently decided to apply for a CO status match and try a different product for a change.

While their hard product is arguably better, the soft product is, to a great extent, disgustind and their operations almost a joke.

Last month I almost missed a flight because they posted a two hour delay on my flight out of EWR and I started watching a movie at the Presidents Club. My experience with AA is that once such a delay is called there's no turning back. Half an hour into the movie I decided to check the flight status to see if it had gotten any worse, only to find in pure horror that CO 'turned back the clock' and the delay had been changed into 45 minutes. Niiiice!

Right now I'm at EWR awaiting flight 438. It's 40 minutes past the scheduled time and CO's app still shows it 'on schedule'. It's pitiful.

I'm willing to bet this is not true.


But if they posted a longer delay then they'd have left without you, right?? ;)

There are a few reasons I keep various other accounts open and try to maintain a decent mileage balance in each:

*Southwest - Usually earn credits from CC use and use for award tickets. In addition to operating more than 50% of flights from my home airport in PVD, the ability to change/reschedule flights without a change fee is a big plus. Sometimes use to "mix and match" domestic trips when CO/UA are too expensive on one leg of a roundtrip.
*AA - usually alot better availability for award travel to Europe, especially BOS-LHR, and during 8 months out of the year (Sep-May), US-Europe awards (even on itineraries that include BA and other partners) are only 40,000 miles R/T in economy. Also ability to book one way awards for half mileage.
*Virgin Atlantic - Decent availability to London from the Northeast US, even in July/August, and the ability to book one-way awards.
*ANA - Distance based award travel chart can result in much "cheaper" award tickets on Star Alliance and other partners, especially from the East Coast of the US to Europe.

I can't remember exactly when AA started posting flight status information (online or otherwise), but in 15+ years I've NEVER seen AA change the status of a delay for better once it's posted. AA delays almost always get worse (in small increments), but never better. And I'm also willing to bet on this.

CO 438 was scheduled to depart at 12:40pm. It was 12:48pm and the inbound aircraft was not even at the gate, but the refresh button kept showing it 'on schedule'. It would be more than reasonable to expect CO to show the scheduled delayed to some extent (30 min?) because that's the least amount of time they would need to turn an aircraft arriving from SNN, especially in yesterday's 'wintery mix' weather. I find this lack of operational coordination very annoying to say the least, especially when it disrupts personal decisions and forces me to be at the gate for a flight that ended up departing with a 120+ min. delay. If CO Operations can't even relay accurate schedule information, what else is not working properly behind the scenes?

The whole CO experience has become so irritating that it's not even worth discussing the absolutely other issues like the sour gate agent, the fact that CO clears stand-by upgrades only 10 min. before boarding time, the 'light' meals (yesterday's lunch time salad was a joke: it featured exactly 9 pieces of lettuce and 3 small strips of chicken -- that's it, nothing else), the nuts in a bag and the FA look when I asked for a second, the ridiculous wine offering, etc. BTW: I consider myself lucky because CO gave me a status match -- can't even imagine how painful it must be flying CO being a non-elite.

Bottom line: AA's hard product clearly needs an upgrade (pun intended) but IMHO everything else they do seems way better than CO.