My husband has begun to travel for business. He expects to travel approx. 60K a year, indefinatley. We have just woken up to the perks of loyalty to one airline (We've been living in a cave!) and I'm trying to figure out which airline that should be.

Since we live in Metro Detroit, NW owns almost all of our travel, which until now has been less than 10K/year, for personal stuff. He now flies to OAK via CO, AA, AW, or (rarely)NW because it is so much cheaper than flying non-stop to SFO on NW.

He was made AW Silver status, (and we didn't even know it existed, which is what woke us up to this whole game) but has decided he isn't crazy about AW and will try to get comped, and eventually earn Gold, on either NW, AA, or CO. My eyes are literally glazing over from reserching all the pros and cons of each.

My ultimate goal isn't to earn free flights, but upgrades, both for his buisness travel and our personal travel together. We had a lot of miles from our WP VISA, so we'd be happy to use them for upgrades for me - but will I even get them? How much can they be?

I initially was thinking my dilemma was solved when I learned CO honors the status of NW elite, but I was reading several posts on other boards that NW elites are actually second in line after CO elites. Do you find this to be the case? If that is true, maybe he should go with CO, since his (eventual)status will be honored by NW.

I am assuming when people are referring to companion upgrades, they are upgrading for free, am I correct?

Can he give me his upgrade awards?

Or should we just forget about the whole NW/CO thing, keep his regular non-elite WP status, and concentrate on AA, although he probably won't ever climb higher than Silver with AA because he is compelled to take cheaper flights which may be with others.

We have AMEX Membership Rewards cards as well, how do they figure in making this decision?

If we have a OnePAss card, can he still have the miles credited to NW, and vice-versa?

Does AW figure into this situation somehow and I'm not aware of it?

I feel like a slacker just coming to you to explain it all. I really have spent hours trying to figure this all out. I doubt I have even remembered to ask you all my questions!

Any feedback you could give me will be greatly appreciated.

Is cost going to be a factor in your husband's business flying? I suspect it is, since you cited NWA's usually high fares between DTW and the west coast cities (right now, however, it's under $300 from DTW to SFO).

Going with any other airline instead of NWA for your Detroit-based travel is almost always going to add a connection in. This may be a good thing, in that prices are usually somewhat more competitive when you add in a connection on United or American or Delta (Delta is probably NWA's closest peer and competitor... they periodically have reciprocal fare wars to attract each other's hub flyers).

If price is not a factor, settle back into your NWA seat and enjoy earning your way up to Gold status. NWA Gold is not all that much different from NWA Platinum. You'll still get the unlimited domestic upgrades (which are capacity controlled, they should clear at least on the day of flight), and you'll get 100% bonus miles on flights with Gold vs. 125% bonus miles for Platinums. This is about the only difference between the top tiers. I'm expecting to end up downgrading from Platinum this year to Gold and I'm not sweatin' anything about this.

Since all your husband has so far to prove any status is AW Silver, I suspect it'll be very difficult to get comped to any NWA status. Just saying "I'm going to fly 60K miles" probably won't do it. Plus if the husband is going to be flying on discounted tickets for his business travel, they'll be even less inclined to comp status.

Good luck!



[This message has been edited by DJMeatBall (edited 03-09-2002).]

PRO:
If you�re Gold or Platinum elite, you can upgrade a companion traveling on a paid ticket for flights within the US mainland, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, and Alaska.
If you have a One Pass card, miles on NW can be credited to the account. Note that you CAN�T merge accounts or combine miles for an award! Flights on CO earn miles and count towards elite status if you�re a NW WorldPerks member.
NW online check-in! Print your boarding pass up to 24 hours before your flight! You can just board your aircraft � no check-in required unless you�re checking baggage.
Upgrade awards (i.e. mileage upgrades) are transferable. However, someone else can NOT use your status to upgrade himself/herself if they�re traveling alone.
CON:
International upgrades to World Business Class can be tough to get during peak travel. NW doesn�t have any guarantee of availability of upgrade space.
Continental�s upgrade policy to Business/First is ridiculous. Please see CO forum if you�re curious about what I mean.
No system-wide upgrade certificates, unlike AA or UA.
Gold elites can upgrade to F anytime on full-Y fares for travel within the US mainland, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, and Alaska. On discounted fares, you can be upgraded at most 3 days in advance. And best of all, it�s done automatically by NW!
Upgrades cost: 20,000 miles round-trip within the US. 40,000 miles between North America and Europe. 50,000 miles between North America and Asia.
Advice:
Getting elite status on NW is the best option. Flying on CO flights earn mileage too. Keep is mind too that to get all the mileage incentives offered by NW, you must be a member of WorldPerks and have the flights credited to your WorldPerks account. NW is quite generous, I think, with their bonuses/incentives. You can check their website out for the latest promotions.
Also, DTW has an excellent NW terminal now. All the other airlines use the old terminal(s). Also keep in mind that flying frequently out of DTW and having to connect somewhere wastes time in the long run. As in business, time is money!

- Pat

[This message has been edited by Wiirachay (edited 03-09-2002).]

Welcome to the FlyerTalk community nigel-bigel. For sure you have found the site that has the most experts on frequent flying whom do not work for the airlines although some of the posters in these forums do. This is the wn factor that causes the fares to be less to OAK. I would imagine it is rare that he flies to OAK on nw as they do not fly to OAK - but rumors abound that they might in the near future. Without at this point suggesting one airline I do suggest one the most important things that I learned on these boards concentrate your flying on one airline as much as possible. But I think you have gotten that much out of getting the hp comp to silver and actually state your intentions to concentrate in your next sentence. If domestic upgrades are what you are looking for then co or nw is the program to choose. If you are interested in international upgrades than aa might be a better choice for you and you should pose this question on the aa forum. One of the benefits of being gold or plat on either nw or co is that you are allowed to have free companion upgrades (space available.) On nw the companions come after the silver in the prefence order of who gets seats and on co the plat companions come after the plats and the gold companions come after the golds and before the silvers. Here I believe you are talking about mileage upgrades and you can get domestic upgrades for 10k one way on a discount tix. The upgrades would come out the same pool of tix as award tix and so you would have to most likely plan far in advance to get these awards as dtw to the west coast is an award sought after by many travelers. In addition seats may not be released for award availability (elite upgrade or mileage) until shortly before travel. Also mileage awards may not be made less than 3 days before travel. Most posters here do not feel domestic upgrades is a good use of mileage but everyone has to make their own decision of what is best for them. I have in fact used mileage upgrades for companions on dtw-sfo flights when I thought that was the only way I could get them upgraded and in one memorable case I did not make the cut for an elite upgrade. The order of elite complimentary upgrades are; (in a perfect world)
NW plat nw co - gold nw co - silver nw co - plat companions nw co - gold companions nw co
CO plat co nw - plat companions co nw - gold co nw - gold companions co nw - silver co nw y e s Yes if he loves you and wants to stay married. I give my wife the upgrade when only one is available and sit in coach. But it is different for everyone and in fact there is a discussion of this going on right here If international upgrades on inexpensive tix is the primary reason than for sure you should go with AA. But if domestic travel is the major portion of your travel than my recommendation is that you stick with either nw or co. I also have an AMEX and I use it to keep miles available in another airline (dl) just in case of emergencies where it becomes neccessary to get a last minute tix and nw has none available. Of course I worry about being stuck with having to pay a bereavement fare so much that I keep a visa in another airline also. The short answer is no. If you fly on either nw or co you can have the miles put in either wp or op accounts but not transferred. As it appears that the best your husband is going to get is mid-level elite I would recommend that you choose one and concentrate on it. There is no way that 2 silvers = one gold. Yes - big time. AW, known as hp, flights count for mileage on co but only a relatively few hp flights count for mileage with nw. As to whether or not you should concentrate on hp I do not know. Of course I have a bias when it comes to hp and perhaps some one else could better answer this question. Thank you nigel-bigel. I have always been a firm believer in teach something once - learn it twice and for sure we have also spent many hours trying to figure it out.
Also if you choose nw do not forget to go to Northwest Airlines Deals and Promotions and sign up for all the promos. Some require that you sign up prior to travel so this is a very important lesson to get early. Also check back here regularily as for some reason a lot of bonus offers seem to be posted here before they are put online

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[This message has been edited by magic111 (edited 03-09-2002).]

Thank you so much to DJ Meatball and magic 111 for your feedback. Wow, Mr. Meatball, I guess I sounded presumptuous about the status comp. Actually, I *was* being presumptuous! After reading all these different forums where people casually mention they got comped from this airline and that airline, I didn't think it was a big deal to get equal status with another airline. Oh, well, I'll still give it a shot. If they say no, we'll earn the status soon enough!

To explain about the cheap flight thing... Husband doesn't do NW non-stop to SFO because the fare always is around $900-1200. He finds fares w/one connection that are under $500 on AA, CO, and hp (Why is AW called hp?). NW has entered the picture by him taking NW to LAX, and then an American Eagle flight to OAK. All of these fares tend not to have a difference of more than $80, which he can justify to his employer.

Well, your responses answered a lot of questions for me, but raised others...

What is the "wn" factor?

Re: NW flying to OAK... I just did a quick check at travelocity, and NW was showing flights to book through NW on CO. Is this called codesharing?

If he were to take that flight would he be treated as a NW flyer on a CO flight or a NW flyer on a NW flight? (Do you see how I can give myself a headache with this stuff? What normal person would think of that question?)

I hate to say this, but I'm lost here. Do I have to make reservations far in advance to use miles for upgrades, or are they released at the last minute? Or do they hold some for upgrading elites, and then release the unused elite seats for upgrade awards peons at the last minute? I'm really not understanding this.

For the record, however, I'm interested in upgrading on domestic flights, and totally feel it would be worth the points on a longer domestic trip.

You are absolutley correct on this point and a very smart man.

What I meant was, would CO allow him to have his CO miles applied *only* to his WP, or would they insist that because he has a OP account, they must go to OP?

[QUOTE/]Of course I have a bias when it comes to hp and perhaps some one else could better answer this question.[/QUOTE]Would you care to share your feelings re: hp? I'm very interested.

Well, magic111, so glad I could help *you* out - hehe!

Again, thank you. I really appreciate your input. While it's obvious we should concentrate on either NW or CO, I just can't figure it out. It looks like CO is better for his chances of getting upgraded on business trips, but NW is better for MY chances of being upgraded on fun trips. Or... wait. Is it the other way around? I obviously haven't studied this enough! (I need Excederin. Now.)

Do most people really make a concious choice of an airline? I always assumed they all kind of just found themselves with a lot of points one day, and then stuck with that carrier.

I certainly would love to hear others opinions. Anyone up for it?

This is where competition Southwest Airlines causes fares to become competitive.

The same thing can be seen here in Detroit: Northwest is trying to sledgehammer out the competition from Spirit Airlines, so you'll see suprisingly low fares from NWA from Detroit to places where Spirit flies (Florida for one; I think a round trip to LAX on Spirit and competition-killing-mode NWA is around $200).

As soon as the competition is driven out of the market (such as when Southwest left San Francisco airport; or if/when Spirit goes out of business, which is what NWA wants to happen, just as they did to Sun Country in Minneapolis), fares zoom up, wayyyy up.

So as much as we like earning miles on Northwest Airlines, you have to thank and credit NWA's competitors for keeping the fares realistic. One of these days I'm going to fly Spirit.


Oh, the "WN" is Southwest's airline code, used on tickets... NW is Northwest's, HP is America's Worst, etc.

Yup. NWA will you to Houston, which is Continental's hub, and then CO will fly you to Oakland. All on a Northwest ticket, and sometimes a CO flight with NWA flight numbers.

As far as companion upgrade priority, it doesn't matter if your husband is a NW or CO account holder. It does matter what airline you're flying on. CO gives YOU, the wife/companion, a better chance of securing an upgrade than NW, because when you fly CO, NW/CO Plat companions get upgrade priority over all NW/CO Gold account holders and companions. It's worse for you on a NW flight, where a NW/CO platinum companion is below even a Silver account holder.

Let me amend that to add that if your husband is a CO account holder, you will edge out a NW account holder companion for an upgrade in the event you are competing for one remaining upgrade.

I hope your head didn't explode :-)

A couple other things to consider. If you plan to fly outside the USA, and will be wanting to upgrade such flights, definately go with NW over CO (even though CO has a vastly superior Business/First Class product). CO has rules that make it very expensive to upgrade from cheap tickets when flying internationally (known as HoKeY rules). We're talking hundreds of dollars more expensive.

CO also is among the worst in the industry as far as award availability (what use are miles if you can't use them?).

Stick with NW and when your husband flies to OAK have him book a NW coded CO flight.

I just checked fares DTW/OAK from 01APR through 08APR and this is what I found out:

DTW-NW-IAH-CO-OAK round trip = 321.50

DTW-NW-SFO " = 350.00

DTW-CO-IAH-CO-OAK " = 389.50

The DTW/OAK roundtrip was for flights at approximately the same time each way from DTW and using the same flights on the IAH/OAK/IAH legs.

NW appears to offer a lower fare on the same itinerary as CO for this particular example.

As I learned from rcowen the other day this is called yield management and it is propriatory information of the airline. Even for those of us who have been around for awhile it is a guessing game. There are so many threads here about award availability it makes my head feel like it is about to explode!
You can phone wp and inquire if there are seats available for upgrade on the flight you have already purchased tix for or you can check online at WP Award Travel Reservations prior to buying your tix.
There are plenty who make it a habit to get as much information about their frequently used routes as to best optimize their opportunity for upgrade. (eg: as a gold I have never been upgraded on a red-eye out of sfo - hence I began avoiding those flights even if more economical or convenient) There are a number of posters here who are both op & wp (elite in both in come cases) My understanding is that they have a great amount of flexibility on which account the miles go into and probably (I would) make the decision based on who has the best bonuses going on at the time. Whew! You are asking this in FlyerTalk! The short answer is on these boards yes and the reasons are many and varied. price-elite benefits-mileage earning opportunities-service-equipment-food-entertainment-etc.-etc.-etc.

My opinion, for what it's worth...

Go with the One Pass (CO) program, this will allow several things:

1) Earn mileage on NW flights
2) Earn mileage on HP flights
3) Allow transfer of AMEX Membership Reward
miles to the account
4) Should easily earn Gold Elite status in
OnePass which will allow CO/NW/HP upgrades

The WorldPerks VISA miles can be used to book a Continental flight, if necessary...but you might want to consider a new VISA with OnePass affiliation so the miles can be credited directly to the OnePass account for easier tracking and usage. Since most of the flying will be to OAK, which NW does not serve, earning the mileage in the FlightFund program doesn't serve you well if you do actually end up on a NW flight from time-to-time... the CO program will offer you the best of both worlds.

Wow! Thank you for your input, you've all raised some good points.

I've decided to just "sleep on it" for a while, since The Husband doesn't have to travel for almost two weeks. I do have a few *more* questions, though...

Do HP flights count towards CO elite status, or do they just earn miles?

How likely is it that an airline will drop or change partners?

And what does EUA mean (it's not in the glossary)?

I think it's interesting that none of you have offered personal opinions about which airline, or FF program, you prefer. I understand you are trying to help me sort out all the pros and cons and make my own decision. But this raises a point... Do you even LIKE NW? CO? And I'd still love to hear from Magic re:HP!

I've been reading the CO board, and they all seem so down on CO - what's up with that? I want to post a similar question on the CO board as I did here , not nearly as detailed of course (would that still be considered spamming?)and I get the feeling they will all repond to run away from CO and OP before it's too late!

Thank again, to all of you...

EUA is Elite Upgrade Automation (Automated? Allocation?). It refers to the computer allocating space available elite upgrades at the appropriate window (Plat, Gold, Silver). In my experience as a NW silver, it works fine on NW flights, but when I'm on CO, I usually only get upgraded at the gate if a seat is still available. I haven't flown on HP (America West has nothing to do with my user name despite appearances ).

I like NW but have never been elite on CO so I can't speak to that. I like the basics of NW's program. What I like about is theoretically the same as CO: the unlimited, space available upgrades and mileage bonuses. One thing I have noticed in reading the CO board is that they do not seem to be releasing upgrade seats at the appropriate windows right now. I've flown on NW recently, and I can state that NW is still performing EUA during the normal windows.

The other chief complaint they seem to have is that lower fares are not upgradeable with miles these days (that's what they call HoKeY; H,K,Y fares are the only upgradeable coach fares). NW has had a similar policy with international fares ever since I've been paying attention; only the top three fare bases are upgradeable to Europe, though the top four fare bases are upgradeable to Asia. But this is a recent change for CO.

Hope this helps! I'm sure others will also offer their opinions.

HP flights DO count toward CO elite status. HP flights DO NOT count toward NW status... and in fact, hardly count for anything on NW unless you're flying to/from Asia (i.e. HP Phoenix-LA and NW LA-Tokyo). IMO, the HP partnership with CO is what gives CO an edge: say your husband flies the following:

30K with CO, 30K with NW, 20K with HP

Under NW, he would have 30K CO + 30K NW = 60K = Gold

Under CO he would have 30K CO + 30K NW + 20K HP = 80K = Platinum

Platinum always trumps a Gold... and in my experience I haven't seen much difference in being CO elite vs. NW elite on either: one given is that NW has larger FC cabins, so odds of upgrading on NW are better.

As far as if airlines change partners, yes they do, but these agreements have been long-standing, so I wouldn't expect any changes soon.

Do I like the airlines? Sure, CO, NW, and HP ahve treated me well-- probably because of the FC upgrades but I haven't had complaints. People here like to cut on HP, but I think they're ok--- and I guess your husband does too, since he's flown with them a lot. As far as CO, people here complain because CO sin't as attentive to service as they were about 2 years ago-- and I have noticed then change as well. (I've also noticed NW get better lately.) But, the CO/NW programs are still some of the best around, especially because of their policy for domestic upgrades for elites and companions.

One last comment: Go Blue!!

I agree with previous advice that focusing miles on CO is better because of the HP link-up. (CO also code-shares with Virgin, which NW does not.) Like NW, CO also has a FF link-up with KLM (though not as complete) in case travel to Europe becomes an issue. Similar link-ups with Alaska. And finally, CO has a link-up with Quantas in case you ever wish to redeem miles to go down under. (NW forces you to go the long way - via Kuala Lumpur - on Malaysia.)

Re the programs themselves - NW has a dedicated elite line for Gold and Plat. CO does not. (I am unconvinced it's a significant utility, but they do tend to pick up the phone faster, which is sometimes useful when trying to rebook on the fly.) CO typically provides better bonus opportunities. CO considers OnePass elite slightly ahead of WorldPerks elite for upgrades. NW (supposedly) is more egalitarian. Obviously, that means the deal's better for OP elites!

Re the airlines - I'd much rather fly CO than NW any day. And I'd rather walk than fly HP any day... but that's just an opinion

Pushpak

[This message has been edited by Pushpak (edited 03-13-2002).]

I'm trying to reconcile the best of both world here. The opportunities for earning the most miles with various carriers is with OP. The majority of our leisure travel is most convenient with NW.

The best of both worlds would be to earn the miles with CO, and then transfer them to NW to purchase upgrades! I'm assuming this isn't possible, correct?

I read on the CO forum that CO doesn't issue upgrade awards, and that all CO upgrades are automatic, based on availability and status. I have the understanding that NW upgrades both by awards and availability, right?

I'm getting so frustrated by trying to figure this out that I'm ready to stay with HP! I think the airlines WANT to make this complicated...