Help me select a program?
 

I just graduated from college and am off to law school in Chicago in three months. Since I anticipate doing some amount of travelling during law school for interviews and such, it's about time I start thinking about what FF program to make my own.

Current mileage:

Continental: 37,100 miles
United: 13,700 miles (soon to be 23,700 through College Plus graduation bonus)
American: 4,500 miles
USAirways: 1,500 miles

I don't have status on any airlines, though that should be pretty obvious. Most of my miles are on CO since my family is in Houston so CO is conveinent for visiting them. I'll be in Chicago... should that make UA the winner?

My goals: I want to maximize my chances of getting / ability to purchase domestic upgrades. Free tickets are kind of a secondary issue for me. I don't particularly anticipate any international travel, though who knows; I may discover a love of international law!

Anyway, I've been reading FT for a while, though this is my first foray into posting. Thanks a bunch.

I am not as familiar with the United program, but I'd say Continental is a decent match with what you talked about (first class upgrades desired, family in Houston). Aside from Houston, where do you anticipate flying to in the US?

I'll probably be flying to New York, Boston, Washington, and/or San Francisco for interviews. I'll be flying to Boston to visit friends. Houston to see family.

With UA you can confirm an upgrade from a discounted fare at the time you purchase tickets by spending 10,000 miles (one way). So, ORD-SFO will cost you 10,000 miles. Then, SFO-ORD will be another 10,000 miles.

Of course, this is subject to availability, which you can search for online.

Moreover, it's 10k miles domestically whether you're flying ORD-SFO, ORD-IAH, or even ORD-DTW. Not always a great value.

you should also consider signing up with Hilton HHonors as well. Whatever the FF program you choose, HHonors will likely help you earn miles quicker with their Double Dip feature, where you'll earn 500 airline miles for each stay. Not only that, HHonors will also allow you to EXCHANGE your HHonors points into airline miles, and vice versa. Now IMHO there are so many ways to earn HHonors points, you'll be getting free airline tickets or hotel stays in no time.

I would go with American if I were in your shoes. I've flown CO for 15 years and am now on the verge of leaving them after so many frustrating changes to the Onepass program this past year making it nearly impossible to upgrade with any reliability.

I'm already a member of HHonors, though so far the only points I have are for changing my account info online.

What has CO done to upset you? I'm kinda out of the loop on watching CO... why would you select AA over UA?

I would choose AA as well. When I lived in Chicago (went to U of C - is that where you are going ??)I was flying back to NYC a lot to visit family and concentrated on AA after UA just made me mad one too many times. On AA you can upgrade any fare, all miles from any source count towards your lifetime total and (hopefully) your lifetime elite status. All fares (except consolidators) earn status miles, and if you earn status you can start earning free upgrades.

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I Love New York -- Viva España

My list of CO peeves:

1. Domestic upgrades are haphazard. Supposedly they are electronic. In reality CO revenue management holds all upgrade seats open until the last minute, even for elites and releases them at the airport. A scrappy silver or Gold can trump a platinum by timing checkin at the airport properly. This sux.

2. Most of the routes that CO used to fly with big aircraft with First class seats are now being replaced with smaller regional jets with no first class cabin (Embraer RJ jets). This is especially horrendous in CLE. See posts by duxfan in the CO forum for details. What is the use of being elite in CO if you have a good chance of flying on a regional jet for 3 hours with no FC cabin?

3. International upgrades are impossible. Elites often get trumped by CO employee non-revs at the gate because of a stupid 72 hour rule initiated by CO. This means that upgrades within 3 days of departure are forbidden with miles. Basically this 72 hr rule is just a way for Co employees to easily get biz seats for themselves. Even harder still is to get reward seats internationally using full miles (no upgrades). Also if you want to use miles to upgrade you have to either pay one of the more expensive fares (HOKEY) or pay what is known as BendForward fares (an extra $400 or so for each segment) and then hope and pray that your upgrade clears before the 72 hour mark. If not then you're out of luck -- you don't get a refund of the $400 extra you fork over either.

4. CO doesn't release many reward seats for domestic or international travel. You will find that you have to travel to other low-traffic airports or be flexible on choice of days. Furthermore there is no way to check availability of reward seats online.

Many many more: for a good laugh, go to the CO forum and search on "HOKEY, BendForward, 72 hour, 30 day rule, international upgrade and EUA".

Go for a winner -- go for AA.

Just an fyi as you compare...

AA has a very good program but is more "costly" than others. It takes 15k points to upgrade to FC domestically each way. And, if you do it within a certain period of time before the flight it'll cost you $50-$75 to do the upgrades using points. You can purchase e-upgrades and try within specific time periods depending on your elite status. CO doesn't charge for the auto-upgrades for elites. AA has the MRTC if you fail to upgrade, CO doesn't.

Just more to think about http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Yep, U of C it is. Should be fun.

I like the all miles = lifetime status miles thing with AA, but I don't like the fact that it's more expensive to upgrade. And after one flight recently, I really like MRTC.

What did UA do to annoy you? I know they were having all sorts of problems when they were looking at a strike; is that over? And a friend of mine worked there for a summer, so I kind of know about employee class. But I'm in Chicago... that seems like it should be a big plus for UA for me. Then again, I guess it's still a huge city.

You do realize that ORD is the hub of AA as well don't you??

If you are considering which airline to join based solely on "hub" status then you should give serious consideration to AA.

Trust me, domestic upgrades for a 1-2 hr flight aren't worth it. Since AA has MRTC you won't have to sit in a cramped coach seat. Once you finish law school, you'll want to upgrade to biz internationally with all your miles, and of course the easiest airline to do that on is with AA.

Oh -- be sure to cash in your 1500 US miles before they declare bankruptcy. Things don't look good for US Air.


[This message has been edited by sgopal2 (edited 06-14-2002).]

If your primary interest is domestic upgrade, I would recommend you choose Continential/Northwest Airlines. (CO and NW are alliance)

Chicago is AA's hub. There are too many top tier elites who are willing to pay full fare. Since you are a student, you are likely to purchase discount coach tickets. Your chance to get confirm upgrade on AA are not high on popular routes like ORD- New York.

CO's upgrade polciy is based on availability, and it won't cost you anything. (AA needs either miles or Electronic Upgrade). You have better chances to sit on CO first than AA.

If you plan to fly internaional a lot, then it's a different story.

If you think you're going to fly 25k/year or 30 segments, then definitely pick AA. Why? Because if you're a student, you'll buy a lot of your trips in advance. If you make even Gold on AA, you'll qualify for exit row seating on making your reservation, and for free business class seating on the one daily 767 flight to LA and to SF and the one daily 777 to Dallas.

So, it's very likely that you'd never have to upgrade to First Class on American, but never have to have a seat pitch less than 35", with the seat next to you blocked unless the flight is totally full.

And with hubs in STL and DFW, if you want to try and earn your status quicker, you can probably get a couple of nice 6-segment round trips to Houston and qualify for Gold for 2003 using a Gold Challenge.

Congrats on U of C. I too am going to law school although I was rejected at Chicago. Came down to Wash U and Indiana for me and I chose Indiana. Small world, I recognize your name from review.com. Anyways, from my experience with interviews, you won't be handling your travel arrangements and will be taking whatever flight they give you. You probably could request flights, but you really don't want to get too pushy when asking for a job. I'd say that UA and AA are most likely the flights you'll be given for interviews. I'd try and go with AA as I find Advantage to be much better and MRTC is a plus.

sgopal2: No, I did not realize ORD is an AA hub. I feel really dumb now. But yes, after one trip on AA in my life, I'm a big fan of MRTC; it helps a bunch since i'm 6'1".

ElmhurstNick: What do you mean by "free business class seating on the one daily 767 flight to LA and to SF and the one daily 777 to Dallas"? I can't find anything about this on the AAdvantage web site. Is this an unpublished perk? Is it guaranteed or based on availability/priority?

hindukid: Small world. :-) Yes, many places will book your travel, but some law firms let you book it and be reimbursed.

Everyone: Thanks a bunch for your insights. Flyertalk is truly a wonderful thing. I haven't seen anyone really discuss why AA is better than UA. Any program details, or just their CS problems?

Anyway, I booked a trip in July on AA, since I don't have very much experience with them at all. If I decide to do a Gold challenge at some point, would these segments count? How do the challenges work?

Thanks again everyone! This is really useful.

Diffferences that I have noticed between AA and UA:

1. AA allows stopovers on Domestic awards. If you were going home you could do something like ORD-IAH-ORD-NYC. Booking the return to NYC with a stopover at ORD would give you a free one way to NYC, then only have to buy a 1 way for the return. Since you can change dates, you'd basically have a free 1 way to NYC good for a year.

2. AA allows using partners along with AA on international awards with exception of BA. For example if going to Italy, you could use LH to go but then would also have to find availability returning on LH. With AA if you took AA to Italy, but no return was available on AA, you could also use SR,air lingus, IB or Finnair. This allows for a lot more flexibility which helps you get the dates that you need.

3. AA partner awards are good for all of Europe not just home country. LH award from UA to Italy would cost 50K to germany and then 20K additional from Germany to Italy. For cities UA doesn't fly to outside of a carriers home country (florence for example)minimum mileage would be 70K. AA carriers will do this on one awards for as little as 40K depending on season.

4.UA doesn't allow domestic connecting travel on international award during domestic blackout days. Wanted to return from Europe on Sunday after thanksgiving. UA wouldn't give me ORD-IAH segment because it was a blackout day. AA said it's allright since I'm using a Europe award and that day wasn't blacked out for Europe. So for awards requiring domestic coonection, you would be subject to both domestic and international blackout days with UA.

5. AA just seems to have better award availability.

You can use AA in combination with BA on a European award, but just not on the international sector. I have booked for the spring - AA)ORD-CDG(stop)
BA)CDG-LHR-AMS(stop/destination)
BA)AMS-LHR
AA)LHR-DFW (stop)
AA)DFW-ORD
All for a 40k award(1 international stop, 1 international destination, 1 domestic stop).
So, in my opinion AA gives you the most flexibility

Thanks for your advice everyone. I recently discovered that I'm going to be doing enough round trips in the next month to get 5000 q-points on AA, so I've enrolled myself in a challenge. I'll be trying out AA in the next little while and seeing if I like it. Thanks for all your help!

Good Luck on the Challenge. I was in a similar position last year when I graduated. My family is also in Houston and I had a large number of miles on Continental, as well as Gold status. I promptly started flying AA, though, and haven't looked back. CO is great... IF you want to go to IAH, EWR, or CLE (MSP, DTW, MEM on Northwest). Bascially everywhere else requires a connection.

I suppose that might be acceptable, but if you need to get somewhere quick for an interview, connections can get annoying fast.

When you combine the connection issue with what everyone else has already pointed out, I think going with AA is a nobrainer.

Welcome to AA, and welcome to Flyertalk.