Frequent Flyers from IL?
 

You guessed it! I live in the windy city with 3 major hubs here! MDW is closer to my house and I work at ORD. I can basically get anywhere out of Chicago.

I want to see the country and see the world more in the coming years so naturally I need to fly more. I joined Mileage Plus, AAdvantage, and Rapid Rewards a while back.

I think SWA can meet all of my domestic needs and I love SWA.

Now internationally I am torn between AA and UA! I have flown both domestically and really can't chose 1 or the other since they both have their flaws. I want to concentrate all the miles I rack up from international travel into one program. United and American seem to be about the same so...

Between AA and UA who has the better mileage program? I do detest AA's mad dogs!

P.S. I get nervous on plans but that is another topic lol. maybe some wine would relax me more!

How many miles do you think you will fly this year? What benefits are you looking for? Do you want upgrades? Better mileage redemptions? Lounge access? From there, choose the program that fits your needs.

I live in IL and I wasn't even aware that we had a windy city here. :)

I began my frequent-flying career in Illinois as well. Over the years, I've found AA and UA to be fairly similar in terms of their FF programs - more similar to each other over the years in terms of rules, status tiers, upgrading, etc. than either has been to DL, NW, CO, or US.

Now that there are essentially three mega-programs, DL, UA, and AA, I still find UA and AA to be very similar on the major points.

I'd first make a list of your desired int'l destinations. You may find that one alliance (Star or Oneworld) covers your own route map better than the other. For example, someone who wants to fly to Germany often is probably better off on United because you can also use a fairly extensive US-Germany service on Lufthansa.

I'd also look at your domestic travels and see if UA or AA covers those destinations particularly well. Don't forget to consider Continental in all of this...they've merged, but some sources may not readily show all of the CO routes as United yet. You may end up deciding to move some medium-haul domestic travel to AA/UA and just leave the short stuff to WN. (That's where WN is the strongest.)

For me, I know I'd probably lean a bit towards UA in the long run. I like Star Alliance better than Oneworld, I like Economy Plus when I'm on UA metal, I like the fact that UA has west, mid, and east hubs, and the addition of the entire CO route structure just adds to the overall coverage.

There are slight variances in the mileage award charts...for me, the big win was when UA and AA both implemented true (no-bull) one-way awards on their own metal. That right there makes their miles more valuable than DL or US miles. (Next week, I'm flying to Canada...up on AA, back on UA, 12.5k miles each way for a ticket that would have been $650 R/T.)

AA gets a couple important nods: ability to make million miler on all earned miles and (I believe) better ability to use one-ways deeper into the Oneworld network, beyond AA metal.

Welcome!
 

Welcome to FT! I am another IL Flyer, mostly out of ORD, but will try to fly out of MKE to maximze EQMs (if it makes sense and if the times work - sometimes, I take the easy way out and just fly out of ORD).

Pinniped has great advice!!!!

I am a UA flyer and for the most part, as a lower level Elite have been pleased. The E+ was my major deciding factor in selecting a program to be loyal to over AA. I have been able to redeem awards for very cheap with minimal miles (ORD-HKG for 65K and $50 in taxes, 12.5K 1 way saver awards, saver awards to Vegas for my parents). Once I hit the 1P level, I have been very lucky on UDUs (and enjoyed the occasional UDU as a 2P). I do like the fact that you can create a OP account and link them and have matching status on CO. I matched to a Plat and have enjoyed EUAs (CO verison of UDUs) on every 2-class cabin flight that I have flown on CO.

In my opinion, the Star Alliance network has more options for redeeming miles internationally, and that is what I tend to look at for redemption. If you are flying long haul international flights, UA has E+ which is welcome on long flights, AC is very good internationally and LH is not bad either.

I am in a wait and see mode in regards to the other changes to the MP/OP program. If you read the UA boards, you will see some of the changes that are not very popular now. I may consider changing to AA at some point, but I am not running (yet) to make the switch.

The good thing about Chicago is that we have options for airlines. :)

As an ORD flyer, I'm a big UA fan. E+ alone is a huge plus if you have to sit in economy. I've had great customer service with UA and such lousy customer service with AA that I don't ever want to fly them again--and with the CO merger should never have to. Of course, if you read the UA and AA boards, you'll find plenty of complaints and praises about service from both airlines.

IMO if you can reach and maintain EXP on AA (and everyone should!), then choose AA as that is measurably better than UA 1K.

If you're mid-tier or lower on either, its more of a toss-up. E+ is offset by what I believe are slightly better redemption opportunities on AA. Mid-tier or lower I'm not sure which program I'd choose but prob lean towards AA. They just seem to have 'cheaper' award ticket availability (sAAver) more so than UA, but I haven't done a scientific survey.

I was UA 1K and AA EXP simultaneously for a little while recently; can definitely attest to AA being better at that level. On AA, if you link your phone number to your account, the computer immediately recognizes you, greets you by name, and saying "Agent" always gets you directly to a Exec Plat-trained agent without any waiting. Amazed that the scores of times I've called at all hours of the day/night/week they've always picked up the phone instantaneously. With UA 1K, I would often have to wait several minutes, and then the person I got would sometimes be completely untrained, mumbling, etc.

As someone else mentioned, the value of AA's lifetime miles from any source are unmatched on any other airline. If I can stay employed, I should be lifetime AA Platinum by this time next year. I hope to live another few decades, so this will be extremely valuable.

That's a bummer if that's happening to 1K's now. I've since dropped out of 1K, but in 2008-2009 I always received very good 1K phone service.

Booking complicated multi-airline awards, rebooking me onto other *A metal during a Chicago blizzard, or simply booking a precise fare bucket so I could use an upgrade...they were always quite competent.

The phone number recognition worked for me as well.

I had other (minor) gripes about UA when I was flying them every week, but the 1K desk did indeed bail me out of irrops a few times, including at least two where I was minutes away from taking an overnight delay. No complaints there.

I've never been EXP. But I've always been comparatively happy with AA GLD and AA PLT phone service (compared to UA low-tier service), so I don't doubt that EXP service is quite good.

While the top-tier phone service (and Admirals Club agents) are great for AA, I don't think there's a huge difference for 1k's.

THE big advantage (IMO, again) to being EXP on AA over UA's 1k is the 8 systemwides which are valid on ANY fare bucket (and good for up to 3 segments). I've only once had one not clear. Additionally, it's my experience that AA does a better job of availability of cheap award seats for its EXP members than UA.

Domestic upgrades AA vs UA seem about the same, some minor quibbles over the fleet (E+, IFE, food, routes, etc) which makes being low- or mid-tier a more even proposition to me. I would (and will) go out of my way with my $'s and personal time to make sure I'm AA EXP. If I absolutely couldn't make EXP, I would have a very hard time deciding which program to devote myself to.

Well my citicard account was apparently opened in IL when I did it online and so often times I need to know this when asked security questions on a call.

And from what I have always heard, it's called the windy city not due to winds, but because that was a slang term used in the 20s and 30s to describe the politicians at the time... The change or move like the wind, or having to do with corruption. It turns out that BOS, where I am from, is actually more windy, but I also heard somewhere that the small beach community of Brigantine, NJ is by far the windiest city around. It's north of Atlantic City and I resided there one summer long ago so I can in fact attest to those strong winds they had.

Oh, and as for on topic stuff, well, alls I know about Chi is to avoid it like the plague when trying to do a ski trip in the winter. I would rather fly BOS-LAX-DEN than BOS-ORD-DEN any day no matter how you slice it!

But yeah if you live there, it's a great hub for two of the major alliances so start earning on both

:)MM.