CO vs. DL?
 

I am new to the site, and I was wondering if you all could give me some advice as to wether to join CO onepass or DL skymiles. Here is some info about myself....

Home Airport: ROC, but attending college in Maryland

Other frequent flyer programs: United Mileageplus (not a lot of miles, probably on ly around 1,500 or so), JetBlue True Blue, Airtran A+ rewards, not a very high status achieved on either of these either.

Travel frequency: Although I am in college, which means that I dont travel a whole lot at least during the school year, I fly more often then most people my age. Other than flight between my hometown and school, I will most likely be visiting CMH, DTW, and New York City area. Another thing to add is that I have friends and family in Israel, and I hope to visit them as well. I know that both CO and DL have nonstop flights to TLV, however, I remeber reading somewhere that DL offers codeshare, while CO does not.

Anyways if anyone else has any info that could be of any help to me in making this decision, it would be great

DL offers code share with ELAL

The best decision is to use the 'search function'. This question has been asked many times and the upshot is that it entirely depends on your flying pattern (ie booking classes).

As a former citizen of ROC, since you list DTW may I humbly suggest NW? DTW's hub. You can fly mainline out of ROC on NW and not to mention that if you are ever elite one day you can upgrade both CO and NW mainline. NW is also slightly better for reward travel than CO or DL, but some will disagree with me on that. In any event, safe travels!^^

DL currently flies its own metal to TLV through ATL; they will start JFK-TLV in March 2008. The LY-DL codeshares will end this coming October with the start of the winter schedule.

If you have no hope of gaining status and are in it for just the miles, Alaska Airlines is probably your best bet for mile collection, just based on their partner airline list and your destinations (DL, AA, CO, NW, BA, AF/KLM)

join CO onepass or DL skymiles
 

Which program to join. Huh. Well, you could do what I've done and what I suspect many other, if not most, FTers have done... join them both.

They're free; Join all the programs! If you join you'll be on the e-mail lists for special promos that might help you.

Perhaps the crux of your question really relates to recommendations on which program in which to accumulate miles? If so, know that of the two, DL and CO, only DL gives system wide upgrades with higher status, but if you read related posts you'll see that they can be tough to redeem. Still, you do get them. Careful as well: you can fly on DL and CO and accumlate OP miles but you might get dinged on the earning rate (50% for cheap fares); so DL is more generous there too.

If you wonder what program offers more "Complimentary Upgrades" based on status it really seems to vary based on which airport you fly from. Search and find some people love CO. If you search and find from your airport CO flyers get upgraded, great! Choose CO. Here's my experience, flying from SNA:

Click here for a post comparing CO and DL

i respectfully disagree with the poster who suggests you join several. Although you might not make it every year, it sounds to me like you may make silver on one of the three domestic skyteam partners. you certainly wont do that if you hopscotch from one program to the next... But i suspect you already knew that, and that is why you asked the question in the first place....

my advice is join co or nw. those airlines give you unlimited upgrades for domestic first. you might only get them once and a while, but once in a while is better than deltas never. my wife is silver and she probably gets upgraded 35% of the time.

maybe the kicker is that co goes to tel aviv direct from newark. i've taken that flight myself a few times, and they do a good job. although it may not mean much, i always think it's good to be elite, even lowly silver, when flying internationally. the airline tends to listen a bit more, and getting an elite coach seat on a 11 hour flight actually counts for something.

good luck