This is exactly how I would rank them overall.

I disagree with that statement totally. Domestically I believe most people who have experienced CO recently in F or in Y will say CO is the best domestic legacy airline in the US.
I would say US is the clear worst, that UA and DL are on par and now that I have experienced AA's full serviced for a while now, I will say that AA is better than UA and DL. So my order of domestic care is:
CO/AA/DL/UA/US

+1 in rating the programs!

I don't think that Jeff is the problem as much as the Ghost of Uncle Leo who resides in Revenue Management. One thing that Jeff made clear at the DO was that he has to justify the "costs" of his program (remember the $100M price tag for domestic upgrades). THOSE people are driving this program into the ground.

Yeah.

I do enjoy CO F but don't believe that their program is that great for upgrades (small cabin). AA domestically is hit or miss. UA & US don't provide a product, save for their internationally equipped aircraft, that I think are competitive with DL.

This is based on MY top 5 interests:

1) COMP Domestic Upgrades
2) COMP Domestic Upgrades
3) COMP Domestic Upgrades
4) International Burning Opportunities (try looking @ AA metal to LHR..)
5) International Upgrades

For any of you interested, my SWU comparison thread has been updated to reflect CO's SWUs.

Safe Travels

You're missing the point. Best F IF you pay for it. CO has a small F to Y ratio meaning MANY Elites sit in Y.

I am not missing the point. Maybe your metric is different from mine. Yes I have mostly flown CO on paid F, but even if you end up in Y on CO you will have better service than on any other.

Right, but isn't that really the point as far as CO is concerned: sell domestic F instead of giving it away to FTers who buy it on cheap fares, and make sure that the F is both high quality and has high demand as a product? Otherwise you end up with the problem that an ex-CEO of CO stated: you're giving away so much pizza that you're forced to make a pizza that's so cheap nobody will pay for it.

It's really hard for me to see what CO is doing wrong here if they are selling their F (even as M+ fares) instead of giving it away, other than not giving F seats to people who buy Y and expect F just because they are regular customers (and in many cases, ones who fill up the plane without making the airline a ton of money). Yeah, it sucks if you want to fly EWR-LAX in F... but you could always fly JFK-LAX on $99 tickets on DL or AA as a midlevel elite if you wanted to do that.

Aside from the 737-500s (which are a small set of the fleet and only have 8F), most of the CO fleet compares quite well to the DL fleet. The 737-700s both have 12F, the 737-800s have between 16-20F domestically (the Guam-based ones still only have 14F), and the 737-900s have 20F.

The thing where CO lacks is the lack of a 757-200 Domestic, as all of their 757-200s are in an international configuration - that being said, they're using occasionally on domestic routes - not much to make/break the system. The 757-300s both have 24F.

The biggest difference with CO is that (a) it's reasonably-priced F so people will pay for it and (b) the ease of elite upgrades from higher fares that clear straight into F. A Platinum needs to book a M fare and will clear into F immediately at the time of ticketing (Golds I think can do this on a B fare). There are a good number of Plats out there that will buy the M fare and take the confirmed upgrade immediately at the time of purchase.

The other big thing that hurts CO with upgrades is their (over)reliance on ERJ-145s/CRJs, which can tend to push elites onto a mainline flight rather than deal with RJs. Add in CoEx facilities at IAH/EWR are bleh-ish (B84 at IAH is one of the worst RJ experiences out there right now), and people do make a concerted effort to avoid those flights.

Comp domestic upgrades on AA are great if you are EXP. Not so if you are Gold or Platinum.
As for International Burning opportunities, as an EXP I do not intend to use my miles to fly to Europe. I'd rather use an SWU on a cheap fare. I look at burning miles to Asia and I have already experienced a rather easy way of finding premium awards on One World partners...
So for me it works with the same criteria as yours except for the destination of my mile burning activities.

I wouldn't burn my AA miles to LHR but have experience finding no availability (except for the 2 weeks most recently opened to award availability) as a result of my Oneworld award. I would say that DL availability, on their own metal, is similar to AA avail. Couldn't find any saver availability for many of the flights I wanted on AA so I ended up on LA or IB.

That is exactly how I would rank it -- this is from someone who has been top tier in more than three different programs over the past 6 years and has settled on recognizing DL as the worst deal amongst the US majors.

AA's award availability on its own planes is better than DL's award availability on its own planes.

I don't know what DL's response to this might be. Why wait? Why care?

I'm not prebooked to 100k on CO for '10 yet, but I'm going to be..very soon. Now. Must buy more CO/*A itins.

Jeff, it's bad luck that the DL beancounters won't listen to you as well as CO management listens to Scott. The DL RM calculus is in need of some in-depth simulation based on different customer decision metrics before it can be relied upon to shape the FFP effectively.

So DL is middle of the pack... not the worst (from your own admission)?

As for AAward availability... I guess we're looking at different markets. Take at look at LHR and find me 2 saaver seats other than next Oct.