AA or NW?
 

Hi

Need some advise on choosing between NWA and AA coming year. This year I spent almost 60K on airline tickets, all within continental US. Ended up with 58K flight miles on AA, 62K flight miles on NW (some, I flew continental but enrolled in worldperks) and 35K miles on UA, Amer. West, Midwest Airlines. Home airport is DCA/IAD. Work takes me to MSP, DFW, IAH, DEN, COS, STL, MCI, DSM, SJC/OAK/SFO. Usually buy the cheapest ticket/convinient times/less connections available through orbitz. I like NW because of the free upgrades unlike AA where I have to either buy an upgrade or use those 500 mile stickers.

My goal this year would be to stick with one airline and attain max level. Which airline would you recommend?

Sounds to me you already made up your mind. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

If you will be traveling international at all then AA is great because you can upgrade any fare with miles. Also you will get VIPOW's at ExPlat level. Redeeming awards is also easy on AA with expanded inventory for ExPlat. AA also counts miles no matter how you earned them to go toward lifetime status. At 1 million miles you get lifetime Gold, at 2 million you get Platinum.
AA has been good to us.

I love AA, but I do travel internationally most of the time, so when I do need the 500M stickers for domestic travel, they are availavble for free to me in most cases(4 per every 10K miles flown). In your case, I would vote for NW, as long as the routes and schedules are good for you. You know both of the products, so if NW is satisfactory, stick with it.

If you're not concerned about status, you might try Alaska Air. I'm pretty sure you can earn Alaska miles for AA & NW flights and then use their miles to get awards on either one.

However, I've never flown AA, NW, or Alaska, so you might want to get independent confirmation that all this is possible.

The idea of putting all your miles on Alaska is an interesting one, as it combines your flying into one account. However, it does not get you as many upgrades.

I'd suggest dropping back to SILVER on Northwest and getting up to 100K on AA or UA. When I was CO-Silver, I got about 95% upgrade on NW. It depends on your routes, but I would say the odds are just about as good when Silver as when Gold.

Use NW to go to MSP and other cities where you have to do one stop anyway. But, shuffle the rest of your travel around so you focus on AA or UA to get to the 1K level. Then try that for a year and see if the benefits are really worth it to you or not.

If your primary goal is domestic upgrades, NW is the way to go. If, however, you think you are going to do some int'l for business, AA/UA have their advantages. Also, if you want to redeem your miles for an int'l trip, AA/UA will give you some better options and it will be easier to get a seat for miles.

All good thoughts. thank you FCfree.