Hello,

I apologize if this is in the wrong thread.

I just moved to the Denver CO area. My in-laws live in St Louis MO, and my parents and family live in Springfield IL. I am trying to decide which airline credit card to pick up and which FF program to start using. I am deciding between United and Southwest. I have heard Southwest points are easier to redeem than United but United flies into my hometown of Springfield IL. If I chose Southwest my parents would have to drive 90 min each way to pick me up and drop me off at the airport in STL because SW doesn't fly into Springfield IL. I am a cyclist and I(very rarely but sometimes) take my bike with me when I travel and SW is $75 one way and United is $150 each way. Any non biased information helping me make my decision is appreciated.

Thanks

Look here, where your post will be moved to.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

Having the oldies driving 90 minutes to pick you up is a very bad idea. You would be better to rent a car, even in one way.

There are seperate forums/threads for credit cards

What you've heard may be misleading.

Southwest points are redeemed on a sliding scale totally proportional to cash cost. You can always redeem somewhere on that scale, but if the cash cost is very high, your redemption can be very high.

United has a simple chart. It costs 25000 miles to get a "controlled capacity" (aka "saver") award coach round trip within the USA, while it costs about double that to get a "last seat" (aka "standard" or "anytime") award coach round trip within the USA.

Predicting Southwest's redemption costs can be very hard. But just let it be said that while redemptions on Southwest can be much less than 25000 points sometimes for a round trip, they can also be much more than 50000 points for a round trip. So United puts limits on it and just two simple categories, while Southwest can charge just about any exact number of points (and that can constantly vary).

So if you earn United points, you know what you're shooting for best case and worst case. If you earn Southwest points, you have no idea what you're shooting for because you don't know the redemption cost until you go to redeem each time.

Having said that, using United miles (even for "saver" redemptions) for not-very-expensive-on-cash domestic coach trips is not usually a good value.. Since Southwest redemption is proportional to cost, on the other hand, it's never a better value or a worse value; it's always the same value compared to the cash price.

Finally, if you want to eventually take some longhaul international trips in business class, you can do that with United miles (once you accumulate enough of them), but you can never do that with Southwest points.


Meanwhile I agree that renting a car would be a lot better than having your parents drive 90 miles each way. In fact, car rentals with Hertz (booked on the United site) are currently a great way to earn United miles (2250 miles for a 1+ day rental in midsize or above, and btw I find midsize at Hertz to often be cost-competitive with compact at Avis).

I routinely fly Los Angeles to Nashville nonstop and then rent a car to drive two-ish hours to Huntsville (where some of my family lives), rather than making connections mid-country to Huntsville (those mid-country connections tend to be more weather-problem-plagued and take just as long for the total trip even without delays, compared to the nonstop which is only affected by weather at the origin and destination).

Thank you for your response sdsearch. 90% of my flights would be denver to STL or denver to SPI which makes united not worth it to me because those are pretty low cost $ fares and to use points most of those are 25,000 pts, the 12,500 ones are hard to find. With that being said, I think I'll go with SW and just rent a car when I need to go to Springfield. Thank you

Look into the Chase Ink card which give 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on some spending. Those points can be transferred to Southwest or United, depending on which is a better option for you at the time.

As you've discovered, the down side of United's program is that saver inventory can get extremely scarce once a regional jet leg is introduced into the route.

The down side of Southwest is that they can get surprisingly expensive once the Wanna Get Away fare buckets sell out for a flight, and since it's revenue-based redemption...

The Southwest + rental car as primary makes sense, but it's easy to build and maintain a stash of United miles through non-flight means )credit card, shopping portals, shopping app, etc.) and there could be times ahead where the 50K United miles + $85 non-elite close in booking fee is a screaming deal if you need to visit someone in the hospital in Illinois 12 hours from now.