Analyzing best airline/program for me
 

I'm moving from Seattle to Los Angeles (nearest airport is LAX), and I'm trying to figure out what the best airline to consolidate my travel on is. From Seattle, I use Alaska Air most of the time. I suspect they won't be the best choice from LAX, but I'm not sure.

I'm not so much looking for someone to tell me "airline X is the one to go with," as to hear about others' strategies for analyzing this and making the decision. I have made a spreadsheet listing the destinations we regularly go to and how many direct flights each airline has from LAX. Alaska actually does fairly well in that analysis, but a lot of those flights are partner flights (e.g. on American). So it makes me wonder if I'd be better off just using one of those airlines directly.

What other factors should I be taking into account? Let's pretend I'm starting with a blank slate (don't take into account the fact that I already have miles banked with Alaska).

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Many variables to consider. How many miles do you expect to fly each year? Will you be flying Coach or First? Foreign or domestic? What's important to you? Free checked baggage? Lounge access? Upgrades? Award tickets?

Great questions.

The vast majority of our travel is domestic, and really among just a few destinations (e.g. SEA, NYC, PDX, SJC, SFO, a few others). The exception would be 1-2 vacations a year that might take us international or to a different destination. Our mileage per year hasn't been very high (not enough to reach elite levels), but it will probably be a bit higher once we move. A little hard to predict. Still, not huge -- I don't want to have to rely on achieving Gold/MVP/whatever to get any value, because even if I reach it in some years, I probably won't in others.

I don't care about free checked baggage. We almost never fly full fare coach, but I really like having upgrades (whether it be paid or miles) available -- that's one of the things I like about Virgin America, but they just don't fly to enough destinations. An airline that doesn't even have First (e.g. Southwest) is out (though Southwest is out for other reasons anyway).

My ideal situation would be an airline where I can actually get First via upgrades on a somewhat regular basis -- I'd take that over award tickets any day of the week. Theoretical upgrades that are never actually available are, of course, worthless.

Are you aware that there is a new program coming out with WN?

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If you do not expect to attain status with any program, I would not count on too many upgrades.

UA and/or its commuter carrier fly to your listed destinations, as does the combination of AA/AS. I would probably either fly UA and credit my miles to its program, or fly a combination of AA and AS, and credit the miles to AA.

If lounge access were important to you, I would look into whether it makes sense to fly UA, but credit the miles to Aegean Airlines' FFP. Like UA, Aegean is a Star Alliance carrier, but Aegean currently has low mileage requirements for attaining Star Alliance Silver and Gold status. (Gold status will get you free lounge access in the U.S. when flying on UA, CO, or US, even in Coach.) You will get Star Alliance Gold status with Aegean if you can credit 20,000 flight miles in a year. The catch is that deeply discounted Coach fares on CO and UA only earn 50% of flown miles on Aegean, but always
earn at least 500 miles. But once attained, status earned on Aegean lasts for two years. Aegean miles can be redeemed for award travel on other Star Alliance carriers, but redemption rates for some awards differ from the rates offered by UA. If interested, check out the thread about this on the FT Star Alliance forum.

Until they have assigned seating and first class, I'm not interested.

I really wonder how long this will last with Aegean. I feel the other Star members may protest.

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Carpe diem.