First of all, I have found this discussion forum a few weeks ago and wish I stumbled upon it a few years earlier There is a wealth of great information here and as I continue to read I am still overwhelmed.

I apologize if the same question has already been asked. I have searched the forums but was not able to find question posed by someone in quite the same situation. I am hoping that some FT pro�s will shed some light and give me some suggestions as which direction to go next.

My current situation/travel patterns:
Gold Status on Delta for last couple years, this year only qualified for Silver (had I found FT sooner, I�d probably do a mile run in December).
I am based in Central Florida � most frequently use MLB and MCO.
I total about 10-15 trips/year to Washington DC (all three airports) area plus 1-3 trips to Northern Europe (most often OSL).

I am thinking abut switching from SkyTeam (DL) to *A and am considering UA or CO.

My Goals:
1. Award travel to WAW for wife, kids and myself every year or two. As far as I know, LOT (which is in *A) is currently the only airline flying directly form the U.S. to WAW. Direct flight are just more convenient when you tag along two kids, but we do not mind having stopovers in reasonable places (after a few experiences I do not consider CDG, a frequent connection spot for Delta, a reasonable airport).
2. Opportunities for international (and domestic) upgrades. International upgrades on Delta are non existent; however I have to admit that I do have a very high success rate on domestic connections even as lowly Silver/Gold.
3. Status match. Based on what I have read hear I should have no trouble getting my status matched on either UA or CO.
4. Opportunities for earning miles from other sources (credit cards etc.) Still have Delta AmEx; it used to be quite a good deal with always double and sometime triple miles, however, right now with 1 mile/$ it is less attractive

Dissatisfactions with Delta:
� Lack of international upgrades.
� Non-existent international awards via Delta.com (it was somewhat manageable while NWA�s website still worked).
� Aversion to flying thru CDG.

Questions:
As mentioned before, I am thinking about *A, specifically CO or UA. Which one would you recommend for the goals described? Or should I maybe stick with DL?

You can get non-stop flights on UA between IAD and MCO. Or you can fly on US to DCA.

Neither UA nor CO offer quite the same opportunities for earning tons of reward miles but neither program has devalued their miles quite as badly as DL has. At least not yet.

You don't fly enough to get SWUs so international upgrades are gong to be a cash+miles proposition on CO (and I think the same on UA). You don't have to buy Y/B/M fares and hope the upgrade clears but the co-pay can be pretty steep. Plus, if you're redeeming for upgrades you're going to run into trouble trying to save up enough points for 4 TATL trips.

I generally like the CO program better than the UA program though if you are going to hit 50K miles the UA program is likely better.

I called CO on DEC 27th to see if they would match my status from DL, and I was told that they no longer were doing that, they stopped doing that on the 26th, so if I was told the truth then I dont think they would match yours as well.

If you'll consider a status match to kick off a new year, you probably should read the following master thread so you don't have to start off with a new alliance as nobody.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...er-thread.html

Welcome to FT!

Thank you sbm21, LADELTA777, and lin821 for quick responses.

Yes I do realize that I do not travel as much as some for enough miles for my vacation plans. That is why I would like to subsidize my miles wit CC spending and other offers.

I do plan on getting at least mid-level status (DL gold equivalent) on the airline of the choice - got to love those Mile Runs

Read the UA board about UA's StarNet filtering. That may present problems for someone such as yourself who flies beyond the UA gateways. The upshot is that even though partner award inventory is availible to UA, UA chooses not to let you have it. US, CO, and BD among * carriers do not block StarNet availibility to their members, and would seem to be better bets.

I am a NW/DL refugee myself, and chose CO as my new carrier of choice. Under Jeff Robertson, DL's award system really sucks.

I don't know that you would want to bother changing planes (and reservations) at FRA to continue on to WAW, but DL can get you to JFK to take SQ to FRA for 90k business/100k first. It's one of the few good values left in their award chart, and it's going away mid-May 2010. You can ticket through then for travel through mid-May 2011.

Remember, UA has E+. This is a huge improvement if you must fly economy.

Excuse my newbie question. But what does SQ mean in this context? I search for it and SQ seems to refer to Singapore Airlines, which I do not believe you are implying for JFK-FRA travel.

I believe he/she does, as SQ is operating JFK-FRA with 744 aircraft: you'll definitely LOVE their inflight service !!!

Any program other then DL would be much better. To add to list of your complains: the worst, virtually non existent customer service; people that have no idea what they are doing. One employee by the name Deb Cone gave instruction to delete 15,000 miles from my DL account for some mythical chargeback that had never occurred, another rep at the "web department" didn't know what points.com was, let alone GPX; she asked me to tell her what kind of offer it was that let me exchange CO for DL. I'm still trying to get my miles back for the past few weeks, by the way. No one contacts me, faxes that I sent did not get replied to. The next step for me would be to take DL an that Deb Cone to a small claims court in NYC.

So, yeah, getting back to your question, any other FF program would be much better. Sorry for the rant, I just got off the phone with DL again. As usual, no resolution in sight.

Thanks for the advice. I checked reward availability on UA and CO websites for sample dates this summer to WAW and indeed UA looked as bad as DL (no availability), while CO has lots of availability. Based on that I am being pushed toward CO, however, no status matching by CO (as reported by LADELTA777 ) is a major letdown.

How about US? Is it comparable to CO and UA?

A call to UA to check availability might provide a fairer assessment of their availability. E.g., when I checked the ANA tool for *A award availability to Europe, CO showed *nothing* - even SQ was offering coach on JFK-FRA.

CO will still match. I am Delta GM and sent an email to CO about matching. The body of the reply is copied below. This was received on 1/6. I set up a OnePass account before emailing about a match.

Hope this helps.

Copy of email from [email protected]

Thank you for contacting the OnePass Service Center.

We are offering a promotion that will match the current elite status you have with another airline's frequent flyer program to an equivalent level in the OnePass Elite program. If you are interested, please reply with the following information:

-Full Name
-OnePass Account Number
-Current Address
-Current Phone Number
-A legible copy of your current elite card from the other airline and a legible copy of the most recent statement from the other airline showing status and current mileage

*The following file types may be included as attachments in your e-mail: doc, pdf, rtf, txt, xls, bmp, gif, jpg, jpeg, png, tif and tiff. There is a size limit of 3MB per attachment.

European, I posted almost the same post as yours last week- same circumstances, just different home base, etc.

I completely concur with Worldpilot- just did the exact same with CO.
Problem holding my status match up is that Delta "recognized " me as Gold on Dec 12 but has yet to send Gold Medallion packet to me. I even went as far as to ask CO if they could use my Silver card for now and then again with my Gold next month, and of course, no dice- just once.

So, now that I am about to make some trips starting 2 weeks, I will be going on CO as a 1st timer, which should mean nothing but no chance at upgrades to 1st. Ironically, my trips will be on UA metal, but branded with CO flight #, not that it would make a difference either.

I chose CO over UA based on what I read here about *NET award booking AND the fact that I walked into local Chase Bank last week and signed up for a debit card (25k miles) and a CC (35k miles), so I will have 60k miles without even stepping onto a CO plane.