2 questions: If all this flying is for work, I assume you will be reimbursed 100% of your airfare costs (at the least) right, so cost won't be a factor? If so, then I will also assume that accumulation of miles earned from these trips will be used for your personal trips?

It depends on the OP's travel policy? Many firms require flying the cheapest carrier (or the cheapest within some margin), so Mileage Plus is moot if you can never book United flights due to price (for example).

Thanks for your advice.

I plan to go to Europe sometime in 2013, but other than that I am open to vacation destinations.

Mid November.

Very, very good questions and posts by everyone. If the OP can take a look at and answer the questions posed by some of us, we'll be able to provide some final insight. Good thread.

yes, 100% of airfare will be reimbursed but I must book the lowest fair available.

Are united flights usually more expensive compared to AA or DL?

Do you know when this travel pattern will end?

If you're open to vacation destinations, you could find value in all the programs (yes, even Skymiles). As for Europe and in general on your awards, would you want to fly in business class, or coach?

I will more than likely be doing this travel pattern for at least a year 11/12-11/13.

This might be helpful to mention that I currently have about 14,000 UA miles MQM and was mistaken about my DL account, I have about 9000 MQM, but 40000 miles overall.

Either one, that doesn't really matter too much. How much would the mileage difference be?

(I will use Europe as an example, but I will build in stopover/open jaw opportunities and use Hawaii as an example of how you can stretch your miles on a Europe award.)

For Europe:

AA
Off peak (Oct 15-May 15) Coach: 40K miles roundtrip
Peak (May 16-Oct 14) Coach: 60K miles roundtrip
Business, all times: 100K miles roundtrip

Note that you can book one ways for half of what I quoted above, and you can include a stopover (in an international gateway city) on each one way award. This means, for example, you can fly HNL-JFK (stopover)-Europe for 20K each way, just as you can only fly JFK-Europe for the same 20K.

AA has pretty good availability to Europe on its own metal, and also note that it has several partners (such as Iberia, Finnair and Air Berlin) that also could work if AA lacks availability on its own metal. I've left out British Airways due to its prohibitive fuel surcharges, but have in mind that if the surcharges work for you, they have good availability as well.

AA Award Chart

DL
Coach: 60K miles roundtrip
Business: 100K miles roundtrip

Delta does not allow one way bookings, but you have the flexibility of booking a stopover AND an open jaw on a round trip ticket. For example, you could book JFK-AMS(stopover)-IST (destination)-CDG-LAX for 60K in Coach (granted, this may not be the best example, because availability is likely tough on CDG-LAX, based on what I've read, but you get my drift). You also could feasibly have an itinerary like JFK-AMS (destination)-JFK (stopover)-SFO for 60K, or even JFK-AMS (destination)-JFK (stopover)-SEA-HNL for 65K (reprices 2nd leg as Hawaii-Europe costs more in miles). Note that to have any chance of flying to Hawaii on a Delta award, you'll probably need to fly on partner Alaska Airlines (I believe their product is excellent, by the way). You can use their website to find availability.

Delta does not have great availability, in general, on its own metal, especially in business class, but fortunately for Europe redemptions, they partner with Air France and KLM (among others that fly to Europe from JFK, such as Alitalia and Air Europa (note that I'm not familiar offhand if DL adds major fuel surcharges for one or both of those)), both of which have good award availability.

Delta Award Chart

UA
Coach: 60K roundtrip
Business: 100K roundtrip

United has some major flexibility with award bookings as well. United also allows one way bookings. United also has the stopover and open jaw opportunity. You can do a similar itinerary (with different likely routes, of course) to the DL itinerary above that adds HNL for only 62.5K total, so only 2.5K more than a normal roundtrip to Europe.

United has a great website that will allow you to book so many award combos. And Star Alliance is extremely well connected for Europe (and across other parts of the globe). For these reasons, UA miles are quite valuable.

United Award Chart

Overall (re: your travel plans), I still think AA or DL would be the way to go for you because they provide upgrade opportunity for high level elites, and are well connected from your presumed preferred airports of LGA and JFK (though I don't have confirmation on this- is EWR better for you? The same?). Skymiles are lame, but they can be redeemed if you know what you're doing. Still, I'd have recommended UA over DL (for the ease of redemption alone) if there were any legitimate chance at regular upgrades on their flights to LAX.

I am drafting another post regarding how I might take it from here if I were you. May take me a while, though. Busy for the next few days.

It depends.

As long as AA is flying 762s for this route, they usually will have a lot of capacity to sell. Last year, I wound up spending more on UA, but I picked up more bumps, so it wound up being a wash. (My travel is almost entirely [all but ~5k BIS] leisure and consequently on my own dime.) This year, my pre-bump costs are approximately the same between UA/AA (3.5cpm), while vouchers have driven UA's cost down to about 2cpm... and no, I don't go on mileage runs.

From my observations, walk-up fares on AA tend to peak around $550 each way while the sky is generally the limit for UA. (I don't follow DL prices.)

Calguy, as you may have surmised, for some people (free) upgrades are important, for some people they are not important.

RPU = Regional Premier Upgrade, on United, �These one-way, one-cabin upgrades are confirmable as early as time of ticketing on select United- and Copa-operated flights within certain regions.� Basically a one way upgrade with a region (e.g. North America) that costs you nothing, which is requested after a ticket is purchased, and then �cleared� by United, at any time up until departure, based on a formula that is allegedly simple and transparent but in reality is rather complicated and veiled. RPUs are awarded upon reaching certain BIS (butt in seat) thresholds (75,000, 100,000) on United.

Other airlines have similar instruments with different names. �Stickers� refers to Americans 500 mile upgrades, which apparently used to literally be stickers which were affixed to paper tickets. Now they are electronic, or �eVIPs�. For JFK-LAX one would use 5 (five) 500 mile upgrades in each direction, once again cleared by the airline based on fare class, elite status, date of purchase, phase on the moon, your astrological sign and whether or not you were nice to your mother this week!

SWU = System Wide Upgrade or on United GPU (Global Premier Upgrade), same as above but may be applied to ANY one way itinerary, e.g. New York to Tokyo.

Yes, there is or are. I�m not familiar with them but others here are very familiar. Pay attention to the forums and you�ll see references to these sites and if you�re interested and willing to put in some time you soon be an expert.

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