For the past several years, my company's preferred (required) airlines were American and British Airlines. I was very satisfied with their frequent flyer programs, especially American's, however, my company has negotiated contracts with new airlines. We can no longer fly American or BA. the new carriers are United and the Star alliance airlines; and also continental; KLM and Northwest. Question: which of these airlines should I start using and which airline's program should I start accumulating miles on. I would automatically choose United if I were not concerned about them going out of buiness and my loosing all of the miles that I will bank. On the other hand, I have been reading pretty discouraging things about Northwest and Continental's flyer programs on this board. I assume that I would do no better with KLM, since they are tied in with Northwest and Continental. All of my travel is to Brazil and argentina is South America, and to Europe. any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to Flyertalk!

I would go with the *Alliance carriers over CO any day of the week. I would recommend NW, but if you're going to South America, you'd be flying on a lot of CO metal & depending on the fares you'd be paying, you may only be able to earn 50% EQMs in the NW program. That being said, UA & NW are two airlines that have a lot of mileage promotions & the *Alliance has a greater global reach (or so it seems). I'm sure UA will be around. If you have a lot of domestic flying too, NW may be better as UA doesn't auto-upgrade elites domestically. But if you're going primarily international, go with UA as I think you'll have more upgrade opportunity.

Also recommending Star Alliance. An option if you're concerned about UA Mileage Plus is to actually start a Lufthansa account and credit all your flights/miles to that account instead. United will offer you more bonus opportunities for domestic flights however...that's the tradeoff.

NW is nice but it doesn't go where you want it to go. I'd get in *A and go for LH M&M, especially if you're outside Germany/Austria/Poland. LH and Varig have flights that are non-stop between Brazil/Argentina and Europe. You'd have a hard time with good flights on the SkyTeam alliance for that routing.

I like NW service (I just started flying them) and US/UA as well, but I'm not all that picky. I'd really pick your new program by finding the alliance that works the best for you, then pick the program within that alliance that seems the best for your flights (and whose planes you will be on the most often). For you I'd guess *A, and LH M&M inside that alliance.

Welecome to Flyertalk! Two years ago when my company switched from UA to AA, they matched our status on at AA. Hopefully you can get that type of arrangement through your travel department.

Good Luck!

Josh

If your company uses a Amex corporate Business card which can participate in Memberships Rewards (and you do), on your Star Alliance flights, consider putting the mileage in an ANA account instead of LH. That way, you have the option of combining the mileage earned from flying with MR points, which you transfer to ANA. LH and UA have a closer program with respect to upgrades, and other posters may point out other downsides of crediting ANA instead of LH, so you should consider all of the pros and cons of each alternative.

That's the key!
The above poster should look at schedules and see which airline is more convenient.

I thought of the Lufthansa plan as the previous poster noted. I used Lufthansa's program before for United Shuttle flights. They were (not sure now) giving 1,000 mi minimum for United Shuttle flights which was much more than United. That's how I got an award without ever getting any Lufthansa miles credited (I did fly LH twice but those flights were credited somewhere else).

I agree that where the traveler is going should dictate which program to join - as you don't want to connect unless absolutely required.

Also remember that CO and NW give free upgrades to their frequent travelers. It gets a little expensive on UA to upgrade.

And for those having trouble cashing mile for CO flights, DL seems to be fairly easy these days (using CO or NW miles).

True, though I am LH Gold for 5 years now and starting 1st of August this year LH crippled the Miles&More program. Not only do they punish certain Economy fares by giving them 8 times less miles than before, I got less miles on a full fare ticket and less on a Business one I flew the last two weeks. Plus they also reduced the intl. upgrades you can earn to one per year, no matter how much you fly.
MileagePlus is an order of magnitude superior to Miles&More.

ANA works well for me. They have a US based visa card too. All flights other than Japan domestic are 1point/dollar X fare class multiplier. Once you hit platinum (mid-tier) you get 100% actual miles flown as a bonus but your EQM AKA Platinum points are calculated off the class multiplier.

Of course I always fly ANA to Asia. If I didn't, the upgrades etc would be meaningless.

A solid 2005 earning and burning miles with Mileage Plus, and then 2006 using up your SWU's (if you make 1K) as many upgrades as you can, may be worth it. Sign up for Visa's, 20,000 + upgrade it to Gold, then 10,000 more miles with convenience checks. Pretty healthy start. Can you get comped to 1P? What kind of status do you have?

Another welcome here to Flyertalk !!
My suggestion is United and the Star Alliance.
While there is indeed risk here lets look at the bright side of things.
A world class program United offers you many unconditional earning opportunities with a wide variety of opportunity when compared to other programs. Only One World is in the same league IMO.
Better cabin seating in many situations and more professional flight crews.
Though in this industry it certainly can vary on a given day.
Lots of labor unrest at many carriers these days.
Though I find United frontlines to be and remain professional and private as of late regarding all the recent concerns.

I believe or expect that US Air will be the first among the current carriers to be among the missing over the next year or months unless a miracle happens.I stand to lose 80k with them.
My suggestion is to have an exit strategy push come to shove should you need to exercise it. Perhaps a way out through Diners Club or a ticket booked once you reach the required redemption amount.
The Inside Flyer Team will hopefully keep us posted on any red flag emergency warnings or bulletins regarding the fate of any carrier that may perish.
But for today you will really appreciate the Star Alliance lounges as a greater & perhaps better alternative to One World.
Not to mention much more comfort and your travel sanity flying with Star Alliance a well managed Alliance.
Milegae Plus customer service is outstanding and always answers the phone and is toll free.I won't get into beating up the others out there.
But you would be surprised at the lack of concern for their customers and frequent flyers. I find many of their rules and penalties to be unacceptable in and out of the program and as a result they lose the lions share of my business every year. The majority of folks I find happy in those programs either have no choice in their choice of travel or haven't flown significantly on Star Alliance or One World to see all the exceptional aspects and benefits that exist. Including supperior reward availabilty(See recent IF study)
Good luck in you decision process.Happy Safe Travels

Thank you all very much for your replies and suggestions. 777, you mentioned some way to protect UA miles through diners club. could you elaborate on details on doing that. I have a diners account. Several of you suggested participating in star through LH instead of UA. I tried to study LH's rules on their website but found them a little hard to understand, especially given the layout. However, it is my impression that LH's plan is not as favorable as UA's, even though they are both in Star. Is that a fair conclusion. If so, then it looks like it would be a trade-off between more favorable rewards with UA versus more security of banked miles with LH.

There really is no guarantee for security out there in any program.
And I have more then a few million out there parked in a variety of programs.
Every day can or could bring a new twist.
Diners Club allows transfers from United Mileage Plus to your Diners Club credit card. This has been an ongoing partnership for a number of years now. You can then transfer from Diners Club Club Rewards back to most other airline programs at a 50% loss. However at the select times through the year they offer times where you can do a transfer and earn 75% Bonus as they did this year with British Airways. Last year it was 100% Bonus.Where we broke even.
LH is just not the program United is from most sources I've heard from.
And the Int programs many of them don't translate into good sense most of the time.There are still some I believe that have expiring milesl So check the fine print regardless of your decision.