Opinions/Advice
 

I recently used my first 2 award tickets for a trip to Maui. It took two years to earn these with no mileage from air travel.
All mileage was from "bonuses", cc usage, and "phone deals". (AAdvantage program)
I am interested primarily in west coast travel with a regular trip out to Hawaii
every couple of years, and trips into California and the Southwest.
Question: Would I be better off joining the
AS program or just staying where I am and continue accruing mileage on AA? It seems that many of the best bonus deals seem to be with AA, and as I maybe take only a couple of actual flights a year, the mileage
is slow to add up. AA's partnership seems good for my needs.
Current totals:
AAdvantage......18,000
Worldperks......13,000

Just looking to consolidate and most efficiently work toward free or reduced
priced travel. My apology if this is posted
to the wrong forum.

Umm... if you already have 18K on AA and 13K on NW, why not just focus on those 2 accounts to top the balances off before thinking about another program? As far as the AS program, just put AS flight credits onto the NW account.

Once you have close to 0 balances, you might want to think about switching... but IMHO, your current balances are large enough to justify continuing to use your existing accounts.

[This message has been edited by Viajero Joven (edited 02-27-2002).]

I recently faced a similar dilemma, but between AS, HP, AA, DL, and CO. I chose AA, even though my miles are quite low compared to AS. I like AA because their reward levels are slightly lower to the destinations I dream about, and I like MRTC. Even though I have miles on DL, I was less than pleased by their 757's seat pitch. I do like the AS Visa, though, for the signup bonus and the yearly bonuses, upgrades, club passes, etc. I also like the OneWorld aspect of AA.

AA also has nice upgrade features in AAdvantage.

[This message has been edited by Western Airlines (edited 02-27-2002).]

As a regular AA flyer I may be prejudiced, but it seems to me that, with your rate of mileage accrual, you'll be getting mostly main-cabin awards. You also won't be making short hops. In that case, I would think that MRTC would be a big plus. The other airlines you're considering are more cramped there. Even on UA you wouldn't be eligible to reserve an Economy Plus seat.

I actually think that AS has the best mileage program around. It certainly offers the broadest range of choices when it comes to earning and using miles and, since you can plug so many different kinds of miles into an AS account, it avoids the accumulation of orphan miles. You could accumulate all of your trips on AA, NWA, AS, CO, KLM, as well as Horizon, Hawaiian, Quantas, Lan Chile, Amtrak in one place and get points from a bunch of hotels, car rental agency, etc., etc., etc.

The AS bank card is great too and comes with bonus miles, a $50 companion certificate and a couple of upgrades every year.

I have more UA points than AS points, but almost every time I need to use miles the options offered by the AS program are far superior.

Agree with everything you say, but I would note that AS miles required to score trips on partner airlines are typically higher than AA miles required for similar awards. AS is a great airline, no doubt, especially for folks based in SEA. Unfortunately, here in PHX, our hub airline choices are HP and WN. HP has problems, as we know. WN is a great carrier, but everyone is familiar with the boarding hassle. RR program has problems too, mostly that the awards expire, and more importantly, you can only use them on WN.

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Without my wings, you know I'd surely die