Why should I go with Continental instead of United?

Why CO?

1) I almost always fly first class (via complimentary upgrades);

2) UA has had surly customer service reps in my experience;

3) CO is less likely to go belly up.

Yes, but CO has 1-800-WE-CARE-NOT!

The opportunity to fly NW instead of CO and get your miles credited to CO if ytou wish, plus as a CO plat flying 72,000+ miles in NW this year, I am 100% for upgrades on NW.

I'm CO because I live in CLE.

However, Vulcan is absolutely correct, the NW alliance and upgrade frequency is wonderful.

Also credit on AS and, now DL.

The NW partnership is underrated, in my opinion. Sure, NW/CO combined is about the size of UA, but NW/CO is actually much better than UA out of my home airport (Kansas City). Two big benefits -

1) Two airlines occasionally will create a fare savings option. Every once in a while, a NW ticket or CO ticket is significantly cheaper than the going "major airlines" price. Having the two separate airlines to choose from essentially doubles the chance of getting a great deal.
2) Even when you don't get a better deal, having two airlines to choose from protects you when one of the airlines decides not to be competitive with the other airlines. If CO decides to price MCI-EWR higher than their competitors (a non-stop premium), I can always fly a NW connection.
3) NW/CO almost always gives me more raw options than UA. From MCI, I can get non-stop flights to only 2 UA hubs (DEN and ORD). I get non-stop flights to all 3 NW and all 3 CO hubs giving me many more options when flying to somewhere where I have to connect. Perhaps with the UA/US partnership UA will become better in this respect.

This is ignoring all of the differences in the FF program which other threads certainly cover.

When I lived in CLE I was CO Gold by flying NWA cause DTW had more direct flights than CLE and less RJ's than CLE....I'm with Vulcan...CO status is ok but fly NWA

Disclaimer: I keep CO status because I fly more short haul flights and get my status by segments

Great point. I have two flights coming up on CO metal that I booked on NWA.com because they were less expensive (for the exact same flights). In fact, on a DEN-OKC flight NWA.com was about $120 less, probably because CO doesn't publish a fare on the routing (that I can find), whereas NW does.

By the user name you can see I fly almost UA and CO almost exclusively. CO is far superior to UA and NW. UA used to be the best but no longer. The planes, crew, food, and free domestic upgrades make CO a gem. I will be the first to admit using OnePass Miles internationally is nearly impossible but with FREE domestic upgrades for elites miles are less important. I fly NW as little as possible. The crews seem unhappy, the food is pretty bad, there is no domestic entertainment system, the seats are uncomfortable and the planes can be older than I am. Having flown all three this month alone CO is most often times the winner!

Unlimited Elite upgrades! Even as a Silver I have a pretty high %age flying out of EWR. Personally, I've not had real issues with award availability. Did have some trouble scoring standard BF seats to HNL, but somehow that worked out as well. Overall a pretty happy camper since defecting from DL in 2000. And yes the alliance with NW is a big plus.

The biggest downside- COACH!

Ditto! I'm CO Plat but fly 99% NW metal these days. Most of the time I'm flying MCI-DTW-BUF on monday mornings (6:15am out of MCI). I usually return fridays BUF-MSP-MCI (NW 1527 MSP-MCI). Give a shout if you ever see a guy wearing jeans/shorts and a tie-die shirt! :-)

Is it realistic for me to expect to earn enough miles for a free flight to Mexico every year, or even every other year? Should I get the official CO credit card or another?

That really depends how often and where you fly.

Why CO for me ?

The combination of CO and NW offers me a schedule
that fits 95 % of my domestic travel.

I've earned elite status and like the
pre-boarding and oher queue-cutting rights
eliteness brings.

The free upgrades when available are nice.

CO is not next in line to disolve in bankruptcy.

United has shown me customer service with a grudge, but YMMV.

The biggest downside of CO has for me has been
the instability and inaccuracy of www.continental.com
and using it to manage my reservations on line.


[This message has been edited by squid (edited 07-09-2003).]

As a former CO Plat (currently Silver, to be No Status next year), this is a no-brainer!

Why UA?

1. Out of SNA there are only two CO flights, SNA-EWR and SNA-IAH. For anyone less than Plat, upgrading the EWR transcon is an impossibility. Even for a Plat, the odds are no better than 50/50. For the IAH flight, the odds are slightly better, but still slim if one is less than Plat.

2. If one fails the upgrade with CO, you're stuck in the worst Coach seat in the sky! With UA, I can get Economy + with no difficulty. That's 4 additional inches of pitch on UA!

3. Redeeming reward tickets on UA is far easier than with CO.

4. Much easier to upgrade internationally on UA! My wife just got a no-hassle upgrade on her SYD-LAX-SYD flights for 30K miles in each direction. She had to waitlist, but no probs clearing in both directions.

It's true that CO's BF is superior to UA BC (although UA intl. FC is markedly superior to CO's BF). Still, UA doesn't charge an $800 "service fee" to upgrade. Since I can't afford the BF upgrade, its superiority is meaningless!

5. UA flies to Sydney, a frequent destination of mine. CO/NW do not!

6. UA flies to more places, more often, and with more non-stop flights than CO/NW! I just got back from Chicago on UA, flying non-stop in E+, with a huge choice of non-stop flights. With CO I would have had to connect at IAH, delaying my arrival by several hours.

5. UA's *Alliance is miles above the CO/NW/KL Alliance. There's hardly a place in the world that either UA or a *Alliance partner doesn't fly to! And CO still has a very serious gap in its western route system due to it's spiteful dumping of HP as a much-needed partner.

6. I've never found UA personnel to be ruder than CO! Quite the contrary, I've found them to be friendlier, and lacking the now-typical CO arrogance ("We usta win a lot of Freddies!").

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Think of how stupid the "average person" is, then consider that half of them are dumber than that! -George Carlin