ex-SFO, which program?
 

Hi all,

I'm new here. Looks like a great place. I know the "which program" question has been asked a million times and a million ways. Hopefully a few of you will humor me.

I'm young...early 20's. Of course, I've been a leisure traveler my whole life but always loved flying. I just moved to San Francisco for a job where I'll be doing a fair bit of business traveling. We have a limited amount of leeway in our ticketing, as flights are expensed to often budget-conscious clients. As such, we tend to fly discounted coach (and occasionally deep-discount), but have a good deal of say in which airlines we fly. I'll likely be traveling 1-3 times per month, domestic.

1-3 times per month is not much compared to many of the people I've seen around here, but enough to earn elite on a given airline I think, provided I mostly stick with them.

Pretty much all of my flying will be ex-SFO (or ex-OAK when absolutely necessary). So of course it makes sense to go with a program that has a lot of flights out of here (though they all seem to). My top destinations for personal travel are RDU (family), DCA/IAD (friends), and occasionally PHL or JFK but not enough to warrant serious consideration as a factor in choosing a program.

As for airlines, I've flown all the domestic carriers. I hate hate hate US Air, I'm not a huge United or AirTran fan but I'm willing to be persuaded. I'm ambivalent about NWA, JetBlue, and Southwest. I like American, which I've mostly flown. I also like Delta and Continental (I know CO has its issues. But I recently had an extremely pleasant flight on 12/28 from RDU-SFO, possibly due to H-class and having my pick of seats...cloth bulkhead, and breakfast in coach was a very nice touch). I also like Virgin a lot but couldn't fly them enough.

I'm currently in the AA camp. I have an AA Citi Plat card, which I use for both personal and biz-expenses. I've currently got 45K miles in the AA bank. However, I'm a little concerned about whether I'll get any real benefits from AA elite status. I can make Gold I'm sure no problem. But I know I'll never make Plat unless I challenge, and once that expires I'm back in the same spot.

My primary concern is comfort. As much as I like flying, we all know doing a lot of it in coach can be taxing. As such, I want a program where I can reasonably look forward to upgrades a) Being available, b) Clearing, and c) Not costing an arm and a leg.

From what I understand, AA Gold can only upgrade full Y, which I'll pretty much never fly. Other perks to AA Gold are the same as other airlines (priority check in, etc etc).

Now I'm sure some (if not many) will say, "Well, you're only gold. You shouldn't expect priviledges like Plats and EXP's get." Fair enough. But if I have a shot at getting them on another program I'm going to seriously consider that.

DL seems to have a really nice system. I've heard some problems with CO upgrades.

Did I answer my own question? Can anyone give me a little advice?

Thanks!

I think sticking with AA is your best bet. UA is the other choice and I'd advise avoiding UA at all costs. Every flight I've taken in the last year with UA has been late, mostly for "mechanical" reasons. Apparently UA can't afford to keep its planes properly maintained so there seem to be constant problems. In addition to the hassle of the constant delays, it makes you wonder how safe UA flights are with the lack of maintenance.

Yeah, I suppose the other obstacle to a different program is that many of my coworkers prefer AA, and of course we fly together a lot of the time. I just feel like I'm not going to get a whole heck of a lot from AA gold...

Useful info - AA has a sale right now, flights thru 4/30, RDU for around $220 all in.

Domestically, they are about the same.
Internationally, AA is better going South, while UA is better to Europe and Asia.

If you challenge, you can get Plat pretty fast, ans the soft landing keeps you at Gold next year. UA's fast track is far harder to attain.

The one factor that could hurt you with AA's program is their free comped domestic upgrades for top tier flyers. For instance, today I got the last upgrade seat on DFW-SFO with 22 people on the upgrade list. If you're looking at upgrades or extra legroom, with a lower status, you might need to accept that you'll need to try and prebook emergency exit rows, as AA doesn't have a zone with extra legroom like UA does, and not expect a lot of upgrades.

Unlike UA, though, AA doesn't have any nonstops to the DC area (UA has SFO-IAD), so you'd need to connect somewhere to get there. I flew via ORD to get there and came back via DFW.

I'd suggest you look at some other items besides comfort.

1. Lifetime status---AA counts every miles you accrue, not just flight miles
2. Award travel---AA has off peak Europe and South America awards for 40K, and One World awards, which are different than partner awards, can be very versatile
3. Lounge access--all the airports you list have Admirals Clubs, with DCA having some of the best staff in the AA network
4. Routes--you'll find AA weak into IAD, where UA is the major player there---AA has a lot of flights into DCA, though---also look at what type of aircraft you would fly with either carrier (mainline vs regional jets)

You didn't mention where you are flying to for work. That to me would be the biggest deciding factor. I may be biased being a long time UA flyer, but out of SFO, for schedules, I would go with UA - and for work purposes, that would be my biggest determining factor.

That said, you also say you will be flying 1-3x/month. If you average 2 (I'm assuming RTs) and have the odd personal flight, you should get very close to qualifying for AA Plat or UA 1P on segments. Make a few connecting flights and you're there.

Being 1P or lower in SFO won't get you very many upgrades, esp to IAD however.

1. Lifetime status doesn't mean much until you hit 1M as far as I understand. At my rate it'll take me at least 10 years, and I'm not that good at delayed gratification.
2. True, the Award stuff is very nice. Does that change when you're gold/plat? I know EXP's have expanded availability but afaik the lower tiers don't.
3. Hmmm. I have no lounge access yet. AC w/ elite discount or PriorityPass?
4. I prefer DCA anyway...it's closer to most of my friends, who live in and around crystal city. In fact, I'm flying my gf and I to DCA in april, but on DL b/c they had the cheaper fares.

I don't have any set destination for work. We fly wherever our clients need us to be.

Clarification:

Can I upgrade non Y/B fares if I'm gold/plat?

The only extra availability I'm aware of now is expanded upgrade availability with systemwides for EXPs (might work for miles, too, but I've never used those to upgrade). Pretty sure we all have the same award access, though a few years back there was expanded award access on BA for EXPs.

Take a look at the UA thread about awards being filtered if you're planning on international travel.

Will Priority Pass get you into AA or UA lounges? I have an AC membership so really don't know anything about that program.

As to 1MM or 2MM status on AA, you'd be surprised how quickly you can get there, particularly if your credit card use or flying increases in years to come. If you do make it to midtier each trip to the east coast is going to bring in at least 10,000 miles. I've seen posters make those tiers primarily on credit card miles without much AA flying. For comparison, on UA that 1MM means one million miles in the air on UA metal. I flew UA for a dozen years and built up 839,000 miles and never got there. I hit the 2MM on AA in 6 years. Just an easier overall path to get there.

I think Priority is almost entirely, if not entirely DL/CO/NW/US lounges.

Maybe I'll decide the AC membership is worth it once I start really flying all the time (had 3 trips this month cut down to 1 in Jan), but for now it seems a little rich for my blood.

Best to read the AA web page on upgrades that spells it all out:
http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?...s/upgrades.jsp

Unless your business travel makes DL a hard sell I would look harder at them.

SFO-SLC-DCA is a great flight (and SLC doesnt have the weather issues that ORD and DFW have). If I have to choose an airport to connect in I would always choose SLC because of the ontime stats.

DL cant beat 1 and 2 (yet on 2 as until the NW merger is fully figured out no one knows for sure whats happening to awards) but 3 and 4 are as good for DL as they are for any other airline.

I actually decided to book SFO-ATL-DCA. Unfortunately, I don't have the miles yet on DL to upgrade, which would be really nice since I leave SFO at 6am :(

I must say the upgrade potential on DL Silver/Gold is very attractive.

As much as I'd like to try for Medallion, it may be a hard sell since AA I believe is our status quo.

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.