I just booked a $300 Air China (mistake fare) flight between Los Angeles and Cambodia.

The round-trip is about 16,500 miles, and I can use either Delta (100%) or Northwest (80%) for mileage purposes. I do not have a frequent flyer account with either airline.

My thinking is to pick up a credit card (15,000 � 20,000 miles), and sign-up for some sundry mileage promotions, in order to accrue enough miles for a future trip to Mexico, Hawaii, or maybe the Caribbean.

I would like to use the airline program that is easier to book award travel.

Is their any meaningful difference securing an award flight with Delta or Northwest? Or, are they about the same?

I would say do Delta Skymiles. Northwest has issues.
However I might sign up for Delta but fly Northwest because you can get extra partner miles and things. Check the posts for Northwest and Delta and it will show to use Northwest but use Delta as your milaege prorgam

It's CHINA AIRLINES, NOT Air China. They are two very different airlines. As for the mileage program, If you're going to liquidate your miles fast, I'd go for Delta because of the 100% earn rate. If you don't plan on doing any travel on a ST carrier soon, credit to NW as their miles do not expire.

That makes absolutely no sense. NW, but credit to DL. Do you mean Fly NW, but credit CO?

I personally would sign up for NW because they seem to have better redemption --at least in my experience. Plus I find their promos to be better and so you will earn more miles if you stay on top of that. It's a choice for every person, but to me it has proven better all the time.

MM

Which hub are you closer to? I like to fly nonstop as much as possible. I really think NW has the better plan, but I live in ATL now, so I do everything DL.

If you're going to fly enough to get status, then I'd go with NW. You'll get upgraded on them or Continental when you fly. They also have great offers in their program and good availability flying anywhere. You also get 100% EQM when you fly on them regardless of fare class.

Having flown with Northwest I would recommend their service.

I guess it depends on the promos and how you use them. If you actually fly one of them a lot, perhaps NW, as the promos involve a lot of flying to pay off. But if you're not flying them that much (and it's hard to from LAX, where the OP is), I'd say Delta may have better promos, because they have way more promos that you can do on the ground based in LAX. For example, right now, sign up for DL SkyMiles Dining (their flavor of iDine/Rewards Network), and do 5 $15 minimum dines in the SoCal region by the end of August, and you earn 5000 bonus miles. (And that's their second dining promo this summer!) Also, I signed up for Delta's program in June based on a promo with Starwood, and got 4000 bonus miles just for signing up that way. (And I wasn't evern SPG before that; I just read about that promo on FT, signed up for SPG, and a minute later, once I had my SPG number, signed up for Delta.) And then Amex offered me a Delta credit card with 10k bonus miles with one purchase (tho I made 5 purchases, those 5 dines ), and no annual fee the first year. And then I earned 1000 bonus miles for a couple two-day Avis rentals when no one else would have given me close that.

I've been with NW for several years, OTOH (tho just as a partner collecting airline, only actually flew NW LAX-MSP-LAX once and hated the seats horribly), and have seen no dining bonuses for quite a while, and without flying them (and with them as neither my primary nor seconary collecting ailrline) can make limited use of most of their partner bonuses, while Deltas have lately been so bountiful for so little spend that I can't pass half of them up even though they're no closer to a "primary" collecting airline for me than NW is.

From nwa.com: Please note: WorldPerks miles have no expiration date. However, consistent with the general terms and conditions of the WorldPerks program, Northwest Airlines reserves the right to change the WorldPerks program at any time without notice, including imposition of expiration limits or reactivation fees. If no mileage from any source is posted to a WorldPerks member�s account for three consecutive years, the account is subject to termination, including forfeiture of all accrued mileage..

Don't know of anyone that has ever lost any NW miles. That quote gives them the option, it does not require it.

Three years is still twice as long as 18 months even if they did take them, most other programs have gone to 18 month expirations.

Personally I have never had much trouble booking on either DL or NW. Both tend to make empty seats available for award redemption at the last minute (2-3 days out) but DL charges you a $75 fee for booking Last Minute trips. If you are looking at strictly RT than they both work about the same, however, on open jaws DL has a more liberal policy. On NW the open Jaw has to be smaller than the flight segments. For instance if you are going from DFW-PSP and driving cross country then flying back RDU-DFW you would be allowed to book that as an award on DL but not on NW. So if only getting one flight is your goal I would probably say DL since you will earn 20% more miles. But also remember that the two programs are code shared. So you can actually earn the miles in a DL account and then use those miles to book flights on NW metal (as well as CO and any other Skyteam partner flight).

DL/NW/CO are all code shared now (for about 3 years now) so I think they meant what they said, fly on NW metal but post to DL. I don't see the purpose of that since if you are flying NW metal as a DL elite you don't get the UG's but it is an option.

NW!!!!!


NW has so many partners, but DL has so few!!!

NW program is much better than DL, but DL flight is much better than NW

if you just looking for the program, NW is the one!!

I hate DL program!!! That's the worst FFP program I have ever had.

let me give you 2 examples

1. I tried from SIN-ICN-PEK-ICN-REP(Siem Reap) on KE, they asked me 60K per ticket for business award even though it was within south asia. If I changed to PNH, they asked for the correct amount of miles, which are 30K. I asked them can you fix the REP problem, they said:" sorry, we can only go whatever computer tell us."

2. I tried BOS-LAX, their computer showed the routing on return for LAX-ATL-xxx(dont remeber)-BOS, but asked for 37500 miles for saver!!!! Hi, I didn't request for that routing!!!

I'd go NW if you are in it for the short haul.