Oh. Thanks for letting me know that too. I always assumed 250$ is a part of the ticket price which would be later deducted. So effectively I would be shelling out 250$ more. That's a smart move :P

Just my 2 cents:

Having lived in a city that was dominated by one airline at the time I was there (UA at DEN, CO had pulled out and F9 was just getting going), I relished the chance not to fly on them and if I was you, I'd get the miles on Continental and keep them alive and see it as a chance to occaisionally use CO, US and UA,(and LH, etc) out of ATL for your travels.

UA has one advantage at ATL, IIRC: Their gates are in the T-terminal and so you can use the much shorter TSA strip-joint/check-point that is exclusively for UA and AA.

And you never know what might happen in the future in terms of mergers and partnerships in the airline and FF world...

HeHateY, thanks for the reply! Yeah, I guess after a while you get bored of taking the same airline from the same airport if its a hub as is the case for ATL. Also, I think it might be beneficial for me to take other flights out of ATL once the new Alliance kicks in as there would be lesser number of CO frequent fliers to complete with as compared to DL and AirTran ones.

I wasn't aware of a special security line for the T gates in ATL though.

Ok...so Delta today announced cancellation of its flight from US to Mumbai altogether. I guess in a way I am lucky I didn't book it as they are now routing those booking through CDG via Air France.