Great points Jazzop. I am going to the Frequent Traveler awards next week and instead of buying an $800 ticket JFK-IAH-JFK Thurs-Fri, I used 25,000 "Pesos" and will most likely get upgraded at my 6 days window. Pretty fantastic if you ask me.

As for international awards, they are hard to find, but not impossible. Once you learn the tricks, the system is beatable. It just takes a while to learn how to make Deltamatic say uncle :D

Okay, in all seriousness, having a standard (base mileage) coach award eligible for complimentary upgrades is indeed a unique perk. AA and UA don't have that at all - if you redeem coach, you're flying coach unless some sort of operational event occurs that plops you into an F seat. (I've read somewhere that Global Services and perhaps AA's variant of GS might be able to, but the garden variety 1K flies coach - period.)

I think most FT'ers place a high value on TATL and TPAC premium cabin, hence the bad rap on DL. I'm out of MCI...there are few domestic awards that make any sense for me. I'll give credit to DL for this though: EYW during Spring Break *is* a logical place to use miles, and I was recently able to book 2 award seats on DL, one-stop through ATL on mainline metal the whole way. AA also had 25k awards, but 2-stops each way, Eagle on MIA-EYW, and an extra 6 total hours of travel. DL was the clear winner in that case.

I still probably lean towards Star Alliance or AA out of JFK, knowing that the OP wants to fly to CA and TX. Depending on frequency, it might hinge on *where* in Texas. If I was a regular commuter to Houston or Dallas, that drives the decision. If Texas is infrequent and Cali is more frequent, I'm *probably* leaning AA...

I'd say US because of no starnet blocking and also its LGA ops. Also UA/CO metal flights also qualify for US credit so if you like EWR that's also good.