What airline should I use...
 

I've made some stupid mistakes on accruing miles this year. It's my first year traveling for work and just didn't think it through. I have the following qualifying balances:

AA: 11.7k
Delta: 9.4k
UA: 9.6k
US: 20k

I need to book IAD -> LAX -> MEL and back for early November, along with some other domestic travel, and I'm trying to figure out where I should put those miles. The travel to Australia could either go on UA/US or AA and another 4 or 5k in domestic travel could also be UA/US or AA. The trip to Australia will put me in Silver on US and the additional domestic travel would put me in Gold, so I'm leaning toward booking on UA and using my US number.

But, I'm concerned about what's going to happen with this merger and the potential transition from *A to OW.

I'm going to be doing probably 50-75k miles next year as well, including one or two SE asia or Europe trips, but mostly domestic RIC/IAD to AUS, DEN, and SFO.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Will you continue flying on DL and UA at least occasionally? If not it would be a shame to leave a total of 19K miles with those carriers - not enough for a R/T award but too many to just abandon.

As for the merger, there are two possibilities - US/AA negotiate a settlement with the DOJ or the trial goes forward. A negotiated settlement could happen any time, making it somewhat hard to forecast when changes that would affect your decision might happen. If the trial goes forward, it won't start till the 2nd half of November as I recall, and who knows how long the judge will take to issue a ruling or what it will be. So a trial means that US probably wouldn't leave *A before the first of the year.

In short, no one can give you firm dates for much of anything - the merger, leaving *A, whatever.

Jim

You have some significant mileage coming up the rest of the year. My best advice is to treat the already-accrued as a sunk cost. Think about your flying patterns going forward, specifically the airports you're OK flying from (you said RIC and IAD, so I assume going up to DCA isn't something you want to do) and where to (AUS, DEN, SFO should all be non-stops on UA given that IAD is a hub). UA seems like the right choice, since you get the most benefit of elite status when flying the actual airline that you have status with.

Now, I do think US Gold currently receives better benefits than the equivalent UA tier, especially if upgrades are your primary concern. But unless you're willing to go to DCA or regularly fly a short segment from RIC to a hub, you'd probably see a lot more UA metal than US.

Some things to consider on UA:

Silver is already pretty useless on UA as it is. You can get most of the perks of being silver just by getting a UA credit card.

Gold benefits are pretty similar on US and UA. The only thing you miss out on are preferred seating and upgraded when flying the other carrier. UA won't let you reserve E+ seats as a US gold, and US won't let UA golds reserve exit rows/bulkheads (or other preferred seats). The seating means less on US as there's only a handful of good seats anyway. Upgrades are virtually nonexistent on UA for golds, especially out of IAD. On the rare times I had to fly UA as a US *G, I can't say I felt like I was missing much, but YMMV.

E+ is nice on long haul flights if you can't buy/upgrade into C or F.

UA's also adding spending requirements for next year, so take a look at what you'll think you'll spend and see if it matches up to the tier you think you can reach. If you're thinking you'll fly 75k miles next year, look at whether you'll spend $7500 before taxes and extras. Otherwise, unless you blow $25k on a UA credit card, you won't hit platinum even if you fly over 100k miles. 1K requires $10k spend on UA period.

UA has a nice benefit of Y/B fares getting a 50% PQM bonus - something US annoyingly doesn't offer on Y/B fares.

I wouldn't worry so much about accruing on US and losing out. If US ends up leaving *A and you have to fly UA, you should be able to do a status/match challenge over to UA or DL.

There's so much that's unpredictable, I'd do what makes sense for now and the foreseeable future, and adjust as the circumstances change.

If US matches your needs over the long haul, go ahead and use them and credit UA to it for now. If UA makes more sense, use them. I agree with the others - just chalk up those miles as a learning experience. The good news is you're not losing all that much, relatively speaking.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

I should have added that there's a good change I'll be moving to CLE next year at some point, and it seems UA has a much larger presence there.

A few other notes:

I don't pay for my business airfare. It gets charged to a corporate account through Concur/AMEX. UA is one of our preferred airlines but US is not. I think it's likely that I will fly UA more often than any of the other carriers for work, and probably for personal travel as well as we like to vacation in Europe and not South America/Caribbean and really enjoy UA's directs between IAD, LHR, and FCO.

So, I think in the long run UA is the right choice, but I'm getting a lot of advise about shooting for US' Gold since I'm closer and then focusing on UA next year.

Are you able to earn MR on that Corporate Amex? I know that on mine, we don't have the option to opt in, but when I was a consultant our firm gave us a $39 option to accrue MR points.

Either way, you're going to be flying a period of time on UA without status, since you can't (legitimately) accrue UA miles while your US number is on the ticket.

You might as well suck it up and do it now. Especially if your employer is willing to pay for the E+ upgrade on the Australia trip (entirely reasonable).

The real status benefits for USA-based flyers are E+ seats and occasional upgrades, both of which are only going to happen with regularity if you're using a carrier's own program. (Free baggage and priority boarding are the other key benefits, but getting the UA credit card would take care of those, at least on your personal travel. BTW, did you get the UA credit card yet? There's a thread in the Credit Card Programs section for a total of 55k signup bonus and no annual fee first year.)

Ok so here's what I did: I have two domestic trips coming up already ticketed and was able to use the "Premier Accelerator" to buy 15.4k PQM. This, plus what I already have will get me Silver before my next trip. Then, what I accrue on actual flights for the rest of the year (around 28k) will put me into Gold.

I also called up Chase and got a MileagePlus Club Card which they overnighted to me in this huge awesome packet of stuff. I'm going to take my business from Amex to Chase and really dig in on United.

Good move. I didn't even know Premier Accelerator existed, but that is a solid option so you get to Gold fast. You may want to now research the Chase Ink and see what you can do on the 5X categories.

I also have Chase Sapphire Preferred and get a ton of points from multiplier agreements. For example I placed a $52 order with Drugstore.com and got 312 points. These are directly transferable to United Award Miles. I'm only going to use the Club Card for United purchases as it earns 2x and my Sapphire for everything else since there are so many multipliers.

Yup, as long as you have one of the transferrable UR products, you're good to go. The CSP is a great card. Using the Ink and shifting your spend to gift cards whenever possible is also an option. At least with me, I already buy so much from Amazon that once a month I'll go to Staples and load up my projected spend with gift cards.

I have a long history with Amex, and currently have two Platinum cards (personal and business, although I should probably downgrade one). MR is a great program, but Chase is starting to take more and more of my business. The fact that Chase UR are 1:1 into Hyatt, but Amex MR are like 3:1 into Starwood is becoming a huge motivator for me to switch completely. If I flew UA at all, it would be a done deal. I'm sure Amex doesn't want to eat into its SPG cardholder base, but they need to up their game on the hotel side.

I have just a hair under 100k MR points right now. I think next year I'm going to redeem them for a ticket for my partner while I pay for my own to wherever we end up going on vacation.

At least I'll be able to bring her up to E+ with me.

While I might have done this differently, I definitely want to congratulate you on doing what so many newer folks on FT seem afraid to do: understanding your situation and then ACTING on it.

You got them to waive the annual fee for the first year on the Club Card, right?

If you're able to, be sure to spend (responsibly :D) 25k on the UA Visa card. That will help you avoid the PQDs starting next year, at least up to platinum level.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm still kicking myself for not dealing with this sooner. If I had thought ahead a bit more earlier in the year I would have hit gold already and be close to platinum.

Yes the annual fee is waived for the first year. Next year I'll just call and threaten to switch back to Amex and see if I can get it waived again :D