I'd personally go with UA from an overall standpoint. Sure if you want airplanes with showers go with AS, or if you want Cathay Pacific biz class to Asia then AA is good. However, your points balances don't suggest that you have a ton to waste (although depends on your travel needs) so I'd suggest looking at United. United by far is the best at releasing award availability that is easy to search for and book right now. AA is terrible in this regard. Plus, AA and AS miles are easy to get via churning right now. UA is not.

This is sage advice. Over and over, I find UA partner award availability with minimal fees. I'm shocked at how seldom I can find what I need using AA miles.

I agree. AA availability is horrible. This leaves AS and UA. It's hard for me to jistify UA as they just had the transfer bonus at the end of last year..an extra 20k ua was nothing to scoff at.

I recommend diversification. I have about 60% Chase (for UA), 20% AS, and 20% AA. UA has been better for me but that could change so I hedge. Except I have only 2% in DL in case I find that one trip where there are better. Hasn't happened yet, but when it does I will be done with DL.

I'm gonna hold off on ordering my next TP for as long as possible and see how it goes.

It's a tossup between UA and AS for me.
Mainly interested in J/F to Asia/Europe from SFO.
Will probably never want to try Emirates due to the large amount of AS miles required; it just isn't worth it to me.

Domestically, I'm covered with the WN points plus Amex Plat GCs and CSR credit.

1. There's really no advantage to accumulate AA miles relative to AS (other than the ability to combine multiple OW partner flights).

2. Award availability (especially to Asia in J/F) is so much better with *A, so UA or AC or NH is the way to go. AC offers bigger transfer bonus often from hotel programs but adds surcharges on its own and a few partners' flights. NH has the best award chart but the program is less flexible and has significant surcharges to some destinations.

3. JL has probably the best award chart (and is distance based), but, like NH, is not very flexible (and passes on surcharges on many flights).

4. KE is also worth considering, mainly for the availability of award seats in J/F on transpacific flights (and a few other sweat spots). Its miles don't expire for 10 years. However, it passes on surcharges on almost all flights.

5. In terms of next significant devaluation, the most likely one is probably AS on the airline side and MR/SPG on the hotel side.

You forget AS also partners with CX and JL. So if you use AA miles to Asia on CX or JL, you pay 70K and 110K respectively, but you only pay 62.5K and 70K for the same destinations using AS miles.

Sure you can only use AS for domestic as it is partner specific. But these days you would need some luck to have convenient AA flights to take you to the CX or JL gateways anyway.

So if you do not mind a position flight, and if your destination is Asia then AS miles are much cheaper for the SAME partners AA have.

As for the devaluation on the CX chart, well AS just added JL a few months ago and the chart is very similar to CX chart. Therefore the AS folks speculate that the CX chart would not be devalued any time soon, despite now it is much cheaper than AA especially in F, especially in the long existing Africa-US route with Hong Kong as stopover.

Finally AS miles is no longer easy to get via churning if you have not kept score on the BofA latest tightening. Besides the bonus is much smaller at 30K a card versus the 60K AA.

UR is fairly easy to get and that is pseudo UA.

Much thanks for your input. What is a position flight?
My guess would be you're saying if I don't mind flying SFO-LAX-HKG-BKK on CX J, instead of SFO-HKG-BKK?
With AS miles, I would have to pay my way for the SFO-LAX leg, correct?

IME, Star Alliance has much better availability than using AS on JL/CX to Asia.
However, I have more experience with UA award bookings that AS.

Any comment on this?
I may have to stockpile AS in this case!

The most frustrating thing is when you *think* you've found AA availability...and then you notice the BA metal and the LHR connection. :mad:

UA is thankfully still no-bull partner redemptions, directly from the United.com site, in *most* situations. (I'm not sure if/where Starnet blocking occurs, but these days I'm usually trying to get 5 coach tickets together, so whatever's going on at the pointy end of the plane doesn't concern me. :o) AA may be a better play for Asia, but these days we're using most miles to visit family in France, and UA still has many more total options to get there and back than AA. (We've used Airberlin once, which was okay but kind of random, and I've never found a single award seat on Iberia - ever.)

Yeah agree. I still like UA the best despite devaluation. The most recent devaluation impacts more the folks who like to exploit it to make like 7 stops in a 2 weeks trip, which is not how I travel typically. But the inability to customize routing to get the airline you want and the hub to transit through is a downer to everyone.

BA award flights as AA redemption search results just give me the angst and drives me up the wall lol

Worse even:
When using AS miles to book partner flights, sometimes they will offer flights with the main leg in Y but price the flight in J.

Example:
JL SFO-HND: Y
JL HND-BKK: J
Price: 65k miles.........waste of my time filtering these out.

Position flight - using a separate ticket not including in the main award to get you to the international gateway.

AS charts are Partner Specific. I suggest you to go over AS charts and read the AS forum because AS award does NOT work the same way as you understand it as how UA or AA works.

Yes, Star A has far more partners to either Asia or EU. However UA costs you more to fly a partner J. 80K IIRC, and no stopover unless it is a round trip. With 70K AS you can fly F on either CX or JL, plus a stopover on oneway. Again, the stopover rule is completely different from how you understand it works under UA program.

Here is an example of our upcoming trip to South Africa in Sept.
Outbound AA J award MIA-DOH-CPT at 75K (pay more so we can avoid an overnight at US gateway as well as at JNB)
Inbound AS F award JNB-HKG//HKG-LAX-SEA-SLC at 70K (JNB-HKG is 3 class while HKG-LAX is 4 class).
(will spend 10 days in The Rockies)
Going home AA Y award SLC-DFW-MIA at 12.5K

Go study the program(s) you are interested in, in their respective forums to gain more knowledge thus make a better decision on which airline to transfer your miles when redeeming TP. Each program has some usages in your travel, but these days the advantages and disadvantages on each program have become much more pronounced than in the past.
So study the various programs rules, their sweet spots, and how that fit into your own travel needs and decide where to put your transferred miles.

Finally this is a Marriott Hotel thread. We really should not turn it into a mileage discussion thread.

Very poor. I also rarely see both legs in J and if I do they're priced at a HIGH level. :mad:

JL releases awards at the opening window AND at close in. It is to the extreme of CX pattern as CX would still have J/F seats in the middle of the time frame. JL does not. There are tons of discussion on both in their dedicated threads in AS forum.

Thank you for your reply.

I'll add in my experience: Ordered 02/13 and posted to Alaska somewhere between 5 and 9 PM PST on 02/21.

If I had to guess, Alaska pulls from the queue on Wednesdays (EST, near midnight) as both of our experiences differed in number of days but both were posted the second Wednesday after initiating the transfer. Could also be a coincidence - would require more datapoints.

Thanks all.