Best program for regular BOS-ORD flights?
 

Hi all,
I've been browsing around these forums studying the differences between AAdvantage and Mileage Plus, but I thought I'd ask for people's opinions based on my specific circumstances. I'm going to be travelling monthly for work between BOS and ORD and will have some liesure travel peppered in there (including a flight to Taiwan at some point). I'd like to make the most of my flying miles, so I was wondering what people thought would be the best program.

Any thoughts?

12 trips bos-ord is ~ 20k mi on non stops if there are any...so w/5k more i believe you would be ist tier elite on either next year....if you are flying 1st class, there may be other considerations....

how much leeway do you have in routing & price of your trips?

what eqm have you accrued on ua & aa this year?

good luck....

edit to add...eqm is mi toward status...

No EQM this year on either AA or UA, so I'm really starting from scratch. There are lots of nonstop flights for both airlines (I think AA has the edge, but that may have changed since the UA/CO merger). As far as pricing/routing, I don't think I have many restrictions outside of flying economy.

I commute regularly BOS-ORD. Both UA/CO and AA have regular flights, so it really doesn't matter too much from a schedule standpoint.

I personally prefer AA, but if you are going to be in the 25k-50k eqm range, you may be happier on United. You will get Economy Plus access for more legroom, where on AA you would be limited to the 12 exit row seats available on each flight. On either airline you are unlikely to be upgraded as a Gold/Premier flyer, but you would probably have higher chances on AA.

You'd have to buy "stickers" for the upgrade on AA, right?

UA will give you the upgrade for free but you'll probably almost never get it.

On AA, you'd have to pay, but have a higher chance of success.

Until you reach some sort of elite status, tho, either one is going to be pretty grim.

AA offers (paid) challenges to reach elite. You could (just barely) qualify for platinum via challenge if you travel round trip every week in discounted coach. The challenge is $240 for platinum. Details here.

Once you're elite, you earn 4 upgrade "stickers" every 10k miles you fly. Each sticker can be converted into 500 miles of space-available upgrade, so BOS-ORD is two stickers. In other words, about every sixth trip would have a chance of upgrade.

If you are short (in stature), I'd probably go for AA. If you challenge, you'll get to a higher elite status much more quickly (AA Plat vs. UA Premier). You'll be fighting for exit row seats rather than nearly-guaranteed Economy Plus, but you'll be earning far more award miles due to the Plat bonus.

Hmmm, the challenge sounds interesting. Based on my flights this year, I would easily reach gold. I'm not sure what next year looks like, but if I have another big international flight or two in there, platinum status could be within reach.

Note that you can't challenge to requal next year, though. You could probably challenge Platinum on AA then do a status match challenge for 1P/Gold on UA/CO though.

What happens with a status match? I assume you get that status on the other airline for that year, but you don't lose status on the original airline, do you? Seems like you shouldn't. I also assume you drop status the next year on both airlines?

If you do a platinum challenge on AA, since it is after June 16th of this year, you will get status for the rest of this year, and all of next year. Actually, until the end of Feb, 2013. Just a thought. After that you should 'soft-land' to Gold status until Feb 2014 (if you don't requalify for Plat in 2012).

I'm not at all sure that's true. UA flies a mix of aircraft on that route, including 752s. With 24 F seats on the latter, even a 2P has a decent chance of getting the upgrade. I know that as a 2P in the past (to which I shall return in 2012, alas), I got upgraded on the 752 at least 50% of the time on flights between hubs and non-hubs. ("The Hub" isn't one as far as UA is concerned.)

Shame on me for not citing my source, because I had some basis for my comment.

Looking at udustats.com, here are the stats for this route:

2P: BOS-ORD 38%
2P: ORD-BOS 36%

1P: BOS-ORD 68%
1P: ORD-BOS 77%

So odds are good as Premier Exec, but as a Premier, you're more likely to be in coach. (There aren't many data points for 2P so it may not be statistically significant... but it's around what I would intuitively expect.)

If you are not going to get 1 million miles in near future with AA, then go with UA. As other FTers mentioned, E+ and frequency is good. OneWorld has only two partners flying to Taiwan, CX and JL, while *A has UA/CO, AC, CA, NH, OZ and TG (BR's application is pending). *A might offer better option of mileage accumulation and redemption for you.

Look into what aircraft are flyng the times you would most likely travel as that will be big also. If one is mostly CR7 and another 319's it should be an easy choice.

Those are not the correct numbers. For one thing, you appear not to have selected UDU, as the numbers above are nominally for all upgrade types. (BOS-ORD is 38% if you add that filter. I don't think the OP is going to be using SWUs.) For another, ORD-BOS -- all types -- is actually at 40%, since one of the few data points is a duplicate.

I looked at udustats before posting, too. Unsurprisingly, the numbers bear out my point about the 752s:

2P BOS-ORD UDU: 75% (small sample size of 4, admittedly)
2P ORD-BOS UDU: 60% (3/5, with duplicate thrown out)

If the OP has absolutely no discretion in which flight/schedule to book, then yes, the odds of an upgrade are fairly low (meaning 1/3 of the time, which I would not consider "almost never").

If, OTOH, the OP has some freedom in choosing flights & can cherry-pick 752s, that will substantially improve the odds, likely to well above 50%.

The UA flights are a mix of 319s, 752s, and E170s. AA has 738s all across the board, which is appealing because I won't have to worry about scheduling my flights to avoid the regional jets. It's a tough call.