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Originally Posted by Alpha
(Post 11056717)
I'm young...early 20's. Of course, I've been a leisure traveler my whole life ....
Sounds like AA is the best for you. |
lol. Well, I meant that of course I've been a leisure traveler only since I'm so young.
So far, it is looking that way (AA). |
For SFO/OAK, UA and AS are two good programs (belonging to both). If you aren't going to be upgraded much, UA gets you E+ if you have lowest status, and AS is pretty much partners with everyone that UA isn't, and your AA, DL and NW miles go to AS status. You can get lowest tier AS status pretty easily, which will get you earning bonuses. The CO relationship now is a "who knows" situation, but you will earn UA miles on them soon enough.
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Are award redemptions on Alaska still priced lower (in miles) than a UA or AA award ticket? I think I've seen that posted here as a positive before for their program, too. Didn't they just start adding the BA fuel surcharge onto award tickets (which wouldn't impact you, of course, unless you had a BA segment)?
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In your situation AA is the best bet.
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Originally Posted by pgary
(Post 11057882)
I actually prefer to travel a bit farther to fly out of Oakland instead of San Francisco. Oakand has much fewer weather related delays. SFO is fully scheduled for departures and landings in clear weather. But when it fogs in, they must shut down one of the two runways being used for the wind conditions they have at the time, as the runways are too close to each other to use in poor visibility. Major traffic jams ensue. Oakland does not have that problem, as it has only one runway to start with for each wind direction. And Oakland gets fogged in much less frequently to start with.
That said, Southwest Airlines is the way to go from Oakland. They have a whole terminal to themselves. If your biz travel is short-haul, Southwest's current FF program will let you redeem award travel to RDU, IAD, BWI (not DCA), ISP, and LGA (later this year, not JFK). Capacity controls tend to be looser than on other carriers. If you run the numbers, you will discover that you can't beat Southwest for earning short-haul and burning long-haul. The wild card is that Southwest knows this fact and hates it. They will be changing its FF program late in 2009, probably to something resembling Virgin's Elevate program. If you crave upgrades to F, I agree that AA is your best option. That's where I focus my legacy mileage accrual these days. |
I was a JFK-based AA Plat for a number of years, now SFO-based 2P/1P. My comparison:
Legroom if you're not top elite: United hands-down for its E+ versus AA's LRTC Reservations: AA hands-down for its US-based reservations versus United's ICC SFO: about the same getting through security and to the gates, RCC is better than Admiral's Club, but both are okay in my opinion Flights: (price, schedule) a tie, but almost all my leisure flying is to NYC Award availability: AA availability seems to be better by a nose. We got 2 biz class awards to NYC for Thanksgiving, but needed to fly back on Tuesday morning. For our most recent trip on United, we got a biz class award to IST, but needed to connect through PDX. I'll have to find out more about the Starnet blocking thing. Actually the airlines that have most pleasantly surprised me in the past are Southwest and JetBlue. |
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