I normally fly AA or UA, but I have a trip on DL and a trip on NW coming up, so I figure I might as well pick up some miles on them while I'm at it. I probably won't fly a combined 25K this year so I'm not going for elite, just a possible award ticket in the future. Which would you recommend I join? Thanks a lot.

Award redemption is very tough with CO, even as an elite. Can't help with NW or DL, sorry.

NW seems to have the most availability. My delta rewards always seem to be on Northwest flights.

DL gets you redemption on SkyTeam airlines. CO and NW do not offer this *yet.*

If you credit your flights to CO, you can transfer the miles to UA via Amtrak.

Can you still change CO into UA via Amtrak? I thought Amtrak was kind of iffy about UA conversions b/c of UA's financial situation? And if it is alright, do they transfer in 5000 mile blocks still?

Something you might also consider is that NW gives free upgrades and Delta does not.

Last year, I only had silver status on CO, and was upgraded every time I flew on both CO and NW.

Delta does not provide this courtesy to frequent fliers. You can however pay $50 to get upgraded for a 1 hour flight. What a joke their FF program is!

Since NW is evidently set to join skyteam May 1, I say go with NW. But look at the CO, DL, NW boards here on flyertalk and see for yourself who's happy and who's not.

Yep, you can still do the transfers in 5,000 mile increments, up to 25,000 per calendar year.

Does anyone have any strong feelings as to which program offers more easy bonus miles? I probably won't be able to fly the 25K, but I'd like to maybe EVENTUALLY get an award ticket through occasional flying combined with random bonus offers.

It all depends on what you consider "easy". For example, do you stay in hotels often? With NWA's just-started (through May 15 I think) Mileage Maximizer (you ramp up to getting triple the normal miles from a hotel stay starting with your 4th stay, after registering), and staying at 500-mile hotels, and making sure you change hotels every night (so every night is a stay!), you'd be racking up 1500 miles per night, and so with just ten nights you'd already have almost 15k! For me (since I have to stay at hotels twice a week), that's quite easy, but obviously for someone who rarely stays in hotels it's far from easy.

Then there's an offer (mention code #2677 after calling 1-800-360-2900) for getting 15000 bonus miles and first year's annual fee waived for signing up for the NWA World Perks Visa over the phone (I THINK that's still valid, but it's been several months since I did mine). When I did mine they accidentally charged me the annual fee and I had to call to get it reversed, but other than that it was the easiest and cheapest 15k miles I've earned yet (since I didn't join BA's FF program in time for that promo a year ago where you could get 20k miles just by test driving a Jaguar!).

Such offers come and go and come and go, so I'm not sure how easy it is to generalize, but NWA certainly does seem to have a good deal of them over the course of the year (some better than others depending on your specific situation, since different promos require you do to different things for the bonus miles).


[This message has been edited by Stefan Daystrom (edited Feb 24, 2004).]

Hi Calflygirl,

I've been an elite w/CO for 5 years now and thought I'd offer you my views on yoru question.

NW seems to have more mileage promos than CO, both for their own flights, and for their partner offers. You will almost certainly have an easier time redeeming awards on NW, unless you are talking about Int'l travel.

If your reward travel is of the free-ticket kind, I'd say go with NW. If you are looking to use miles to upgrade paid fares, it depends on whether you'll want to upgrade domestic vs. intl. If domestic upgrades are your choice, you may find NW & CO to be roughly equal in your ability to secure said upgrade. If you are looking to upgrade paid intl flights, go with CO - NW is very difficult to get an upgrade to Europe and Asia unless you buy a full-fare coach ticket -- you know, the $2500 roundtrip type fares. I've had good success upgrading CO intl fares, despite the villified "HoKeY lottery" you'll see discussed and trashed (and not without reason, I might add) on the CO board.

Personally, I love CO, and I also love NW, but I love NW just a little less than CO. CO's product is just better than NW's, IMHO, and that's why I've stuck with them for the past 5 years.

CALfly5

(PS: I wonder if there's a 'CALflyguy' on this board....)

NW - definitely. They have the easiest earning opportunities. I don't recall which promo it was, but my roommates & I all earned 10K for doing a 10-bar (iDine) bar crawl in DC & taking a $130 RT flight to PDX the next morning - NW is always doing promos & their redemption availability is pretty easy to work with. However, with CO, you can always transfer the miles in to Amtrak at upto 25K/yr then over to UA and use UA awards. I recommend NW unless you're looking to filter your miles into Amtrak to United.

Editted to add - if you transfer over, you've got to do it in 5K increments upto 25K/yr.

[This message has been edited by bhatnasx (edited Feb 24, 2004).]

CO has partners QF and VS.

Unless you want those, I'd bank in NW.

I'd go with NW. I have all three programs (for many years before they were partners) and NW has the most flexibility in award redemption and a good network esp with the new alliances and soon-to-be Skyteam member.

I've been so happy with them that I've kept most of my miles with NW and now GOLD with them.

They have good "bonus" options, including new member referral bonuses for the person referring and the person being referred. (I'd be happy to refer you if you don't have another person).

[email protected]