Concentrating vs. spreading status and miles - which is better?
 

I'm doing a lot of travel for work to various locations, and for most of the flights I have a choice between United and Delta. (Estimating around 60k miles per year.) Is it better to concentrate all this mileage earning on one airline (likely United) and go for higher status tiers, or should I try to go for the basic level of status on United AND Delta?

There are three things I care about when it comes to status, in decreasing order of priority:
- Earning miles that I can use for cheap economy award travel (to international locations, mostly).
- Getting free access to Economy Plus seats.
- Being able to book economy award travel last minute, make changes, and cancel/redeposit without huge fees.

I don't care about free checked bags, priority boarding, priority security, etc. and I also don't care that much about flying in premium cabins, particularly when not traveling for business.

Keep in mind that by earning higher levels in a particular program you also earn a higher bonus mileage rate. So, instead of 25k in UA + 25k in DL, you'd have 50k UA + 6250 UA for the 25% bonus in RDM.

As for
Take a look here for UA and also take a look at whatever other ones you want to compare to:
http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...ticketing.aspx

For last minute awards, having miles in more programs will give more flexiblity. But only if you can accrue enough in each program to have the required amount for your intended trips. Having 10k in two programs isn't all that useful.

You estimate 60k miles -- which, split between United and Delta, yields Silver on each airline. I'd rather have Gold on one.

How many segments are in those 60k miles? Maybe you'll have enough to split for Gold on United and Silver on Delta?

Since you are traveling for business and it appears you can direct your spending to a particular program I would choose one program and go for Gold. Your goal is to get the most RDMs for your flying and have improved access to Economy Plus seating. Generally speaking, the higher your status the more access you get.

Don't forget the improved priority in standby and rebooking during IRROPS.

The "highly advertised" award levels (25k miles for domestic coach round trip, for example) are "capacity controlled", often called "saver". Award travel last minute often involves using "standard" awards, which are typically twice the number of miles of saver (eg, 50k miles for domestic coach round trip) or in some cases can be even more than that.

So you may want to look at adding miles from credit cards, dining programs, shopping portals, etc, to the miles you earn from flying if last-minute awards are your goal, because you're likely to need a lot more miles than you earn from just flying for those.

And with that said, there are more opportunities (because of the differences between UA's partner Chase and DL's partner Amex) to earn miles aplenty "on the ground" with UA than with DL. So for that reason also I would recommend UA.

And the highest mileage requirements for last-minute travel are even higher at DL than they are at UA. So there again there's a nod toward UA.

Having said that: Those "standard" awards which work for last-minute travel, they only work as far as that airline's own planes (own "metal") will take you. You cannot use "standard" awards for partner travel generally. So are all your expected last-minute award destinations ones to which UA flies its own planes?

United wins with respect to award redemptions. Delta wins with respect to product. Both require lots of spend ($$$) to get any status at all.

Not enough for gold on United and silver or Delta, unfortunately.

Is it typically better to spread status around or to have it on one airline? I could get silver on both. What are the important details to consider? Or is there no clear answer? That's fine too, in which I will just do what's easiest.

[QUOTE=davie355;23115798] I'd rather have Gold on one.QUOTE]

+1. I would really prefer to secure a meaningful elite level on 1 carrier.

With Silver at UA you don't get access to Economy Plus seats until at check-in. Is that good enough for you? If not, that could be a one-step answer to your question!

Also, you want to reduce fees. Go check the elite status information and see what the differences are in fees at each of these airlines between first and second level of status. First level of status doesn't tend to get much waived in the fees that you care about, but I'm not even sure how much second level of status gets in waived fees.

But also do the math on fees. If you're only going to incur the fees once or twice a year, but you have to pay more than those fees to earn the status (remember, at each of these two airlines there's not only a minimum number of qualifying miles for status but also a minimum amount of qualifying spend. if not this second by the start of next year), is it worth it to avoid the fees?

At most airlines (but again I don't know all the specifics of DL), first-level status mostly gets you just the benefits you said you don't care about (free checked bag, priority boarding, etc), ie, not much different in kind (though sometimes better in quantity*) than what you typically get as benefits with that airline's credit card. You typically need second-level up to get much different benefits than just what the airline's credit card gives.

*By "quantity", I mean first-level status may get more free checked bags than just credit card holder, first level status may board one group earlier than just credit card holder, etc.

As for status earning, based on the OP's situation and preferences, I'd also recommend consolidating and going for mid-tier tier in one, rather than low tier in two. Like sdsearch posted, low tier doesn't get you much and this is even more so with the things the OP is most interested in. And between the two, I'd pick UA for generally the same reasons others have stated upthread.

With the CC miles and consolidation vs. spreading out... it's good not to have all of your eggs in one basket, due to devaluations, strengths and weaknesses of each program/airline/alliance, etc. However you don't want to spread things too thin such that you're slow to earn some useful balances to redeem. I tend to re-evaluate my future travel goals periodically and adjust my CC activity (bonuses and everyday spend) as best I can accordingly. Also on occasion a really, really good CC bonus may come along that I didn't plan for (like the original BA 100K Chase card a few years back, for example) and that causes me to shift the spend a bit differently.

Guess that doesn't really answer the question, but it's probably one where there will never be on clear answer for all.

Thanks for the responses, all.

Only Gold on United will allow you to choose E+. And on Delta you have to pay for EC.