InsideFlyer researching the Best/Worst features of each program
 

In an upcoming story, we've been putting together a list of the absolute best feature of each frequent traveler and a list of the absolute worst feature of each program. Any of you care to comment on the best/worst features of each of your programs to compare with others?

I'll start: among the best features of the Mileage Plus program is the fact they don't charge you express redemption fees for awards like it seems all the other programs do. Forget that $35-75 stuff.

My fellow AA FTers: I've created this thread to help consolidate our comments on AAdvantage.

FewMiles..

------------------
[ FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web ]
[ Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage ] [ Unofficial oneworld Info Desk ]

Southwest Rapid Rewards

Best: Double credit for Internet bookings, no capacity controls, ability to use half an award ticket for one-way travel

Worst: No Hawaii or international destinations, 12-month expiration of unused credits

I think the best part of the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is the wide variety of partners on which to accrue and redeem miles. Alaska is a great program to 'link' between airlines like NW/CO and, say, AA. As I fly a little bit on CO each year, a little more on AA and NW, and a lot on AS, I get to accumulate miles for all those flights in one program. Then I can go and redeem those miles on the above mentioned airlines or on Qantas, British, Lan Chile or Hawaiian.

Wow this is going to be tough. There's so many! Well, the HoKeY fares on Continental and LUser fares on Delta immediately jump to mind as being contenders for WORST features of each of those programs. HoKeY and LUser refer to restrictions on what fares are upgradeable (H, K, and Y = international upgradeable on CO, L and U = not upgradeable on Delta).

Randy, your question reminds me of a thread on United from a few months back where a person was trying to decide between UA and CO, and in the response was given top 10 reasons why CO is better, and top 10 reasons why UA is better. I thought that the "top 10 reasons" was a great way of directly comparing two programs and gave a great deal of information. You can check that thread out at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum50/HTML/007783.html

(Edited to fix link)

[This message has been edited by anthonyanthony (edited 12-06-2001).]

I'll chime in with Continental:

Best: unlimited domestic upgrades (with no restriction based on fare paid)

Worst: the absolute worst has to be the new HoKeY rule for international upgrades - only the most expensive fares put you into a lottery for using miles to upgrade.


PS. Anthonyanthony beat me to the punch, he snuck in his post just as I was hitting "submit now" http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by jetsetter777 (edited 12-06-2001).]

Delta Skymiles

Best : CRC membership for PMs
Worst : LUser fares

Northwest WorldPerks

Best : Unlimited automated upgrades for all elites
Worst : No segment qualification

Similarly, I've started this thread to consolidate United MP comments.

LH miles&more:

+++ high mileage credits, counting as status miles too, for paid flight-class and for status (already for only having FrequentFlier status) making it 125% credits eco / 250% business and 375% first for flights with all Starcarriers.
++ status validity: always at least 24 months (in the first year a maximum of 35 months and 30 days if you qualify per march-1 ...; first-time-qualification and renewing based on any 12 subsequent months not calendar year)
+ one-class upgrades worldwide with miles or vouchers on any (paid) fare
--- the high amount of miles needed for one-way upgrades (European members).
-- extra miles needed for award ticket- (or upgrade-) connections Germany - Rest of Europe.
- high amount of status miles for one international upgrade voucher (100'000 status miles needed)

Adding on to the Delta list:

Best: Unlimited domestic upgrades for PMs (barring the LUser fare of course).
Upgrade at the time of booking for PMs.

Worst: Restricted upgrades on International flights (Y, B and M only).

Best features of NW WorldPerks: unlimited domestic US upgrades

Worst features of NW WorldPerks: dealing with NW

best features of AA: upgrade any published fare, international or national.

worst features of AA: mucho dinero for expediting or chaning award tix

worst feature of NW World Perks
no mileage credit for CyberSavers

Frontier's Best: Award ticket for only 15,000 miles.

Frontier's Worst: No affinity credit card other than Diners.

I want to 2nd the following

CO: Three things stand out for me with One Pass: 1) Best Unlimited Upgrades for domestic service 2) 75K threshold for the top tier,and 3) the numerous OP mile bonus' that they consistantly offer
CO: Worst: HoKeY fares for upgrade lottery. Its the lottery part that I find are the worst, not so much the higher fares to u/g

DL: Best: Two things Plats getting Free CRC and ease which I've been able to redeem Free travel awards

DL Worst: far and away not being able to up grade on L/U fares (this was one of the main factors for me switching to CO)

Northwest- Best- Ability to book coach award ticket on-line for 19000 points.

Worst- No FF credit for cyberfares

I use OnePass, but I have to admit that the year round 20K mile rewards on FlightFund have caused me to think about switching in the past . . .

Best Of Air Canada

No capacity controls on award redemption at time of booking for SE (top tier) status. The ONLY FFP that I'm aware of where you are not at the mercy of yield management and their impenetrable methodology about how many seats are award vs. revenue, and when seats are finally (if at all) tossed back to award inventory.

FOR INTL. J TRAVEL, THERE IS NO PEER TO AEROPLAN.

Plus, during select times of the year, SEs get award travel at 25-33% off regular award levels, which are reasonable in the first place.

Worst of AC:

For domestic mileage accumulation, AC is now leveraging its market dominance...lousy earning potential.

Upgrades are only transferable to those with same status.

Northwest and Continental do not charge express redemption fees either. And there was a loophole mentioned in FT to avoid the fees charged by Delta.

And with AAdvantage - if you know that you are going to make a trip within a year, you can request a certificate and use it for a last minute trip without paying any fees.

Are you interested in hotel programs as well?

Others have hit mine with regards to Delta.

Hilton
Best - Diamond members are promised upgrades if available and free breakfast, as well as the diamond line for reservations.

Worst - Inconsistent execution of the benefits depending on the property you stay at.

For the airlines that I am quite familiar with, here are my best/worst features:

British Airways
pros: No blackout on club/1st awards, good partner promos, allow household miles to be pooled
cons: No mileage on discount tickets

Northwest Airlines
pros: Unlimited domestic upgrades, reduced off peak awards, 125% bonus for Plat.
cons: No intl. upgrades for Plat., no mileage for cybersavers

United
pros: Blackouts waived for 1K, SWU for 1Ks
cons: Mileage Plus is a follower not a leader in FFPs.


[This message has been edited by PG (edited 12-09-2001).]

US Airways:

Pro: Unlimited NA Upgrades for Top Tier, all levels of elite get SWUs

Con: Paper upgrades non transferable.

However, CO does charge a $75 fee when you are booking last minute reward travel that requires a paper ticket!

(I got burned by this last week when I booked last minute plans using OP mileage on AS.) :-(

Somthing I don't think anyone's mentioning is award ticket availability, the ability to use your miles for free trips.

You've got the miles, but if you can't use them what good are they?

AA, UA: good award ticket availability esp domestically. NO SATURDAY STAY REQUIRED FOR LOW END AWARDS.

CO: poor award ticket availability, for either free trips or upgrades. And CO (along with US now) requires Sat stay for normal domestic award tix. This makes them at best worth about what a discount coach ticket is worth, perhaps $400.

Without this Sat night stay requirement, a FF award ticket can be worth $2000 or more domestically.

Quite a difference!

America West Airline

• Best feature:
  Almost guaranteed upgrades due to limited competition from few elite members.
• Worst feature:
  It's America's Worst Airline

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif Bring back the old smilies! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

United
pros: SWU for 1Ks - but should be unlimited, Electronic awards avoiding paper/fees/delays
cons: MP is a follower/not leader, No Double-Upgrades option/ restriction, Staff training / I know more about the UA Mileage Plus and Star Alliance programs than UA staff


------------------
- Bob

worst has to be HoKeY, hands down!

Delta

Best - unlimited upgrades at time of booking and free CRC membership ( for PM only)

Worst - non upgradeable fares (LUser for domestic, anything less than "M" for int'l)

Southwest

Best - any open seat available for award redemption with virtually no blackouts.

Worst - no priority check in, reserved seats or any other amenity for Companion Pass holders.

Continental. HoKeY. Period.

CO: best - unlimited domestic upgrades; worst: HoKeY fares => highly restricted international upgrades.

[This message has been edited by dgolds (edited 12-06-2001).]

BEST
Diners Club, double British Airways redemption every summer

American, Million Miler Lifetime Gold (2MM, Lifetime Platinum).

British Airways, Concorde Award

United, 100K, First Class US-Europe(vs 125K on AA)

United:

pro - First Meal Choices for 1K, Systemwide Upgrades, 1K service centres
con - Upgrades on H and higher fares internationally, Follower not leader, inconsistant service

Continental
Best: unlimited domestic upgrades, generous mileage bonuses

Worst: HoKeY; 100,000 miles for free Business First ticket over the Atlantic; no system-wide upgrades, no dedicated assistance counters at airports

KLM Flying Dutchman

+++ One-Way award tix as basis - you can build your individual route as you want
++ huge bonus-miles promos (last year you could easily get 72k miles in Germany via a contest; actually they comp FF-status and MILEAGE of other FF-Progs-members...)
++ Upgrades possible on every paid fare
+ Automatic Upgrade on NW intra-US for Royalwing elites
- Upgrade availability not too good
- lame information policy and customer support
- complicated Points-Programm with tables only available in print and different for each country
--- addtl. award points needed for connections to AMS

CO:

Best - Domestic Upgrade Program

Worst - HoKeY Int'l Upgrades

RChavez

KLM

Worst: need to spend (large) amounts of points for connections to AMS on award tickets (while those are very cheap if buying cheap econ tickets.
Bad: low earning (no real miles earning) = expensive award tickets
Bad: no automatic upgrades except in US, no system wide upgrade vouchers for elite tier members, no Million Miler status (would probably equal something more like 1.5 million real miles)

Best feature: lounges

NW

Best - Domestic upgrade policy

Worst - Poor availability for international award tickets (particularly Europe)

No international upgrade certificates and limited upgrade opportunities with miles

No real extra Platinum benefits (no waived blackouts, no waived redeposit fees, no extra award availability, no extra upgrade options - except for 2 days earlier)

Continental
best-unlimited domestic upgrade opportunities

worst-by far the HoKeY Fare rule on international BF upgrade. plus their inflexible BF award booking even for their top tier members.

BA con: large difference in international rules, regulations and perks. No official upgrade perks.

Ba pro: OW, excellent lounge network, customer service.

CO BEST: Unlimited domestic upgrades at any fare--especially for top tier OP members.

CO WORST http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gifWell I'll probably ruffle a few feathers, but) I can actually live with the HoKY fares, but what irks me the most is paying the higher fare and still being subject to the 30 day roulette rule (on European flights). http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif


[This message has been edited by mauld (edited 12-07-2001).]