I am tossing up different frequent flier programs. United and US Airways are both star alliance members so you can claim each airline's points with the other.

I'm interested in knowing people's thoughts comparing the two ?

One problem I have with US is the high change fees they have on award travel.

Unless you are a Chairman's Preferred member you pay a $250 change fee for transatlantic or transpacific ticket changes.

On the plus side, US does not have starnet blocking so award availability is better.

The award related fees are higher but at least for now, in many instances the mileage requirements are still low. US didn't bump their award levels in the past year like many airlines.

Example:
US - Europe: Y:50K C:80K F:125K
US - N.Asia: Y:60K C:90K F:120K
US - NZ/AU: Y:80K C:110K F:140K

And there's seemingly no mileage limit, meaning you can travel LAX to SYD via BKK, HKG, and SIN if you wanted to and found the space. Oh, and generally a perfect match between what ANA inventory shows available and what US agents can see.

Other than this specific award flexibility (fees notwithstanding), if you value the service level more, go with UA. If you travel enough for 1K, the SWU's and CR-1's are far more valuable than the near-nothing you get from US as a top tier elite.

In my experience, U.S. Air miles are easier to use on Star Alliance international flights, but UAL miles are easier to get. I collect both whenever they are free or cheap.

Can't say which program is better, per se. But I think most folks would say that UA is a better airline with better planes, reliability, service, seat options, etc. None of this is to say that UA is great. But US is held in pretty low regard in lots of quarters (including at its own Flyertalk Forum) for lots of reasons. You might want to take these factors into account in making your choice of program and airline.

how/where do you fly and how often? What class of service do you normally buy? What is your goal for the miles? (upgrading, free tickets or ...?)

If you are interested in using miles for a partner, I'd accumulate on US Airways. United blocks some availability on partners (See the United Forum thread on Starnet blocking.).

Mike

Remarkably, I have found US award travel to be a sweet easy bargain when it comes to inter-regional overseas flights. It's the only reason that I keep my US ff account. For example, going TPE to ICN roundtrip is a bargain at 20k miles, especially when they put you on Thai Airways. Thai Airways' service and classiness puts both UA and US to shame. And the partner *A award seats have seemed really easy to book through US. UA seems to make it quite a pain to book partner *A award seats.
US miles used to be easy to get with their cc offers, with first year annual fee waived. But the fee waiving seems to have disappeared.

I have both and my experience is that United is far better for award seat availability on United than US is for seats on US. US miles are only better for Star Alliance awards (excluding United flights, which they also block).

Is this blocking new or is it just rare availability?
I've only tried once somewhat recently (fall of 2008) and had no problems--used US ff miles successfully to book UA SJC-ORD. For a second award seat on the same flights, I used UA ff miles.

Keep in mind that, at the end of October, CO will also join the Star Alliance. As a CO plat, that means I want to target specific awards with my UA and US miles as I won't really be participating in their programs after that date.

For a newcomer, it would also be worth considering the CO program -- especially since CO is currently our country's best airline. How the specific benefits will stack up, though, is unknown. The current weakness in the CO program is award availability, but that might improve once the Star offerings are added to the mix.

With CO, UA and US in the mix, though, Star will be a very compelling choice for US-based travellers.

delete

United has economy plus where once you have reached Premier you get more legroom.

That's a wonderful benefit.

I would argue that CO is only the best of the main carriers.
Southwest makes a lot more sense than any of them in many ways. Unfortunately, for corporate domestic travel, my own company and its AMEX supplier discourage use of Southwest. It's too bad because Southwest is so much easier and cheaper to work with for last minute cancellations, etc. The corporation does not permit us to travel first or business class on the company's dime. It is a royal pain because most of our travel is booked in the final week or so (ie middle seat next to the toilets), and our travel is sometimes overseas! Of course, that does not prevent us from using elite status, etc for getting upgrades for ourselves.

How far can we go off topic here before getting banned permanently from the forum here?

Partner award travel with CO miles doesn't seem so bad at the moment. I just used a bunch of CO miles to fly North America to Africa on KLM. The challenge was when there were ticketing problems in Africa. KLM couldn't solve them. I had to phone CO in North America to fix it, and 1-800 US numbers may not be dialable from Africa/overseas. You had to find the CO Newark number which only operated 08h00-21h00 ET, M-F or something like that. And that puts you in a bind if you have to go through the automatic phone operator thing or get put on hold because telephone service overseas isn't always reliable enough to last through a hold.

I don't know if *A, US or UA award travel has similar odds and ends.

I'm also in a similar boat. I've got 50K on UA; 71K on US; and 27K on CO. I don't fly any one of them enough to be elite level by any stretch of the imagination. Does your answer change if you know you're never going to be elite?

With CO coming to the fold of *A, I'm contemplating accruing everything there rather than on US or UA.