thewellmans

I just took a job that is going to keep me in the air 5-6 days out of the week. If you had to pick three programs what would you choose?

pinniped

Home airport? Common paid routes? Desired award routes? Perks important to you (max free trips, max upgrades, etc.) Projected elite-qualifying miles per year flown? Other details? Welcome to FT - you've come to the right place - but we need a little more insight to make a recommendation.

thewellmans

San Diego is the Home Airport

Not sure on common paid routs yet - 1st week was SD to New York to Vegas to Ontario CA - 2nd week is SD to Oakland to Colorado Springs to Ontario, CA to Las Vegas to San Diego

Desired awards to Omaha, Nebraska or St. Louis, MO or Hawaii :-)

Projected whosamagigit? :-)

Does this help?

ja_user

Read allot more about a couple of the programs that fly to your common destinations. Bouncing around the West coast you will probably end up in multiple programs. But figure out what a EQM/EQP is before you fly much more. You may kick yourself for missing Free upgrades do to how you flew one week.....

And saying you want awards to Omaha and St. Louis may get you flamed.

SAN-OMA tends to be very cheap, via EWR. If you into that sort of thing, check the MR forum.

PHLDividends

Take a look at Delta and American (direct flights to JFK) and USAir/America West (lots of flights from San Diego to various hubs). If I had to pick 3 out of San Diego (other than Southwest), I would probably go with those 3 airlines (others will disagree, especially since Delta is still in bankruptcy). I like United's service better than any of these 3, but it doesn't seem to have nearly as much service out of San Diego.

Good luck, and welcome to FT!

pinniped

My choice (don't laugh) would be AA for your transcons and midwest flights and WN for your short hops between SoCal and Vegas.

AA has nonstops to NYC and STL. Everybody has one-stops to Omaha so you aren't losing anything by flying AA there.

WN has SoCal to Vegas covered with dozens of flights, and the segment is so short that the service on EVERY airline is going to be pretty much the same. WN isn't too popular on this board, but as a complement the bulk of your travels on AA, it's not bad.

It's easy to collect lots of WN credits if you rent cars, so a few Vegas trips will put you at a free ticket, whereas it might otherwise only put you at a few thousand US miles. Last year I flew maybe 3 total roundtrips on WN, but rented about 15 cars and ended up with over 2 free WN tickets. Right now Omaha is too cheap to use awards, but six months from now it could easily be a place nobody is running fare sales to. All of a sudden those WN freebies are looking pretty good.

In general, I'd pick 1 legacy carrier and consider Southwest. I probably wouldn't split between 2 or 3 legacies unless you're really flying some odd routes. The key with the legacies is making it to that first elite tier as fast as possible, so splitting among several of them will just end up with you hating them all. You will hate flying the legacies until you reach the low-elite point, at which point it begins to become more of a humane experience. If you can hit mid-tier on AA, it then becomes a relatively pleasant. Not as good as it should be, but tolerable.

redbeard911

Even though I'm a UA guy, I think overall AA may be a good first choice out of SAN. Inter-CA you will probably get pushed to WN. (I'll pray for you.) Does your company have restrictions on how your airline is selected?

jan_believes

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Welcome to FT!!! Hope your new job is enjoyable....and the security flaws/pains are few!!!

I think you got some great advice here.