willbaude

Hello all, I'm an avid reader but haven't posted until now. Thanks to a new move and new job I'm suddenly going to start flying a lot more than I have before-- basically every week from SFO to SAN for several years, plus occasional, less predictable, trips from SFO around the county (mostly to the midwest and east coasts). And I'm going to be paying for all of these flights out of my own pocket. So I'd like to figure out what program to invest in. The three choices for my SFO-SAN route will be UA, SW, and Virgin, which seem to have roughly competitive prices for those flights.

Advantages of UA: I can do the UA status-match challenge this fall (I'm a measly silver on US Airways) and have at least some minor elite benefits-- elite security lanes, earlyish boarding, extra miles. I understand that ugrades will be virutally non-existent for the lowest premier category, but on a flight this short, that's ok. Also, I can likely fly UA or some codeshare for almost all of my other flights, meaning I might make it to Premier Executive next year.

Advantages of SW: No change fees could be a real benefit if I'm doing the flight every week; it will be easier to buy my tickets in advance and move them around if something comes up. Thus, for example, I could more easily buy a bunch of tickets this weekend to take advantage of the tax thing. A-List on SW seems less useful than 1P on UA.

While I like Virgin's style a great deal, I don't see any benefits to Virgin that outweigh these two.

Thoughts on which airline I should use? Ultimately, I'd like to make the flying experience as smooth as possible for a weekly commute (which I've never done before) while keeping expenses down.

[Apologies for double-posting this in both the UA and SW boards-- I wasn't sure where else a UA v SW post belonged.]

707Flyer

faced a similar choice among the same 3 airlines, and went with WN

number one reason was no change fees, I added up what I spent in one year on B6, UA, and VX change fees, and it wasn't pretty

number two - no barbie jets, hate RJs more than many flyers, and you will run into a few of them on UA SAN-SFO

number three -declining use of channel 9 on UA, my favorite thing about that airline and angry pilots seem to be multiplying over there and turning it off

biggest drawbacks for me are fewer non-stop transcons and limited int'l benefits, but those are far outweighed by 1 and 2 above

in your case, you might want to also think about frequency, in addition to 9 or 10 SAN-SFO runs a day, WN also does SAN-OAK 12x a day, which means when SFO is fogged in, as it often is, you could re-book yourself to OAK without paying extra or wasting time on the phone or at the airport processing the change

toomanybooks

If you have a wife/friend/significant other/business partner to travel with, you should factor in the value of a WN Companion Pass, which you will achieve at some point. Free trips for that Companion flying with you anywhere for up to 2 years. This is worth much more to me than the 110K WN points which give that status.

You should also compare the value the WN Visa would give you vs. whatever card you have that would give UA miles.

I haven't run the numbers, but maybe you could go for miles/points/elite status on both WN and UA.

I might add that someone newly traveling as much as you would probably get A LOT out of the Chicago Seminars linked in my sig.

Michael El

I split most of my flights between SWA and *A airlines. I dumped Delta a couple of years ago. I've got enough US Air and Delta miles to take a couple of international trips. That's a huge factor to consider.

I like that SWA gives full credit for cancelled flights, but they charge full fare if you want to change the day of flight. Since your travel is coming out of your pocket, SWA may be your best route to use Rapid Rewards points for your business travel. A companion pass has become very difficult to earn with RR 2.0 though.

Also look at airline partners to help you maximize points on the airline you choose.

I know nothing about Vigin.


Good luck and welcome to the unfriendly skies.

ssk1127

In the first year, WN will look like a better deal. If your trips are for work and company paid, the lack of change fees is less significant. Otherwise, it will take a little time for that benefit to kick in on UA.

Once you do make 2nd or 3rd tier status on UA, you will be better off on UA. Bag and change fees become a non-issue. First class upgrades are a nice benefit. Don't underestimate priority boarding; WN has priority boarding as long as you are there to board. As a business traveler, if you hustle to the gate 15-20 mins before departure as most of us do, on UA you can jump to the front of the line and have your seat waiting for you. Add in the occasional trip from SFO to other locations (UA with a much larger variety of choices) and international options for redemption, and in the long run UA looks better.

The companion pass is nice if you are married without children. Otherwise, if you have kids you'll have to pay for them anyway and if you don't have a frequent travel companion there's no point.

Since you can status match on UA, you should go with UA and ramp up as quickly as you can to move to a higher tier status. Once you get to that point, you'll realize the benefits of being a UA FF instead of WN.

707Flyer

I thought 1Ps and 2Ps still had to pay change fees even though their bag fees are waived.

tusphotog

I don't think it's really that tough. If you're flying a r/t a week, you can earn a CP easily. Qualifying for it via points seems to be quicker, at least for me.

UA doesn't charge change fees to 2Ps or 1Ks? I thought they did.

Michael El

You're right if one can actually do 100 one-ways in a year. I guess you'd have to have the Visa card and fly business select to get 110,000 points.

toomanybooks

I'd guess very few people will get it with 100 one-ways. Average 1 RT a week for a year? Yeah, sure, a few consultants and road warriors.

110K points with hotels (first 600), rental cars (first 600), other partners, CC spend, flight points MUCH more likely. I don't fly for business, but with some creativity I'll get there.

eponymous_coward

Link to the UA thread (now closed due to rule violation):

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...n-commute.html

Anyways, I'll stress that I'd be looking at this primarily in terms of "what does this cost me out of pocket" as opposed to "what strokes my ego and gives me that first class trip with champagne".

The bottom line is you can BUY that first class trip with champagne. So evaluate what you want out of the deal (are upgrades important? aspirational travel? lack of change fees? better ticket prices?) and the most cost-effective way to get there, just as efficiently and rationally as airlines evaluate their service offerings (), and you're most of the way there.

willbaude

Thanks to everybody for their replies. I do have a somewhat frequent travel companion for my recreational flights, but she won't be coming with me on the SFO-SAN route.

I have one more question about how to compare the reward programs. Suppose what I want to do with my FF/RR is just use them to save money as much as possible-- either on long-distance travel we already planned to do, or on my regular route. It looks to me like SW RR points earn me the equivalent of a 10% rebate on all if my flights-- you earn 6 points per dollar and redeem them at 60 points per dollar, if you fly the cheap fares.

What is the approximate dollar value of a UA FF mile? My roundtrips will be about $200 or less, and 1000 miles.

eponymous_coward

This is a difficult question.

In one sense, you can cash in UA miles to the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars of expensive intercontinental first class fares on Star Alliance to places like Bali, Europe, and so on. 10, 20 cents a mile is not ridiculous "return".

On the other hand- would you PAY tens of thousands of dollars? No? What would you pay as replacement value if someone offered you it on discount- or what WOULD you pay, even if it meant you were in a coach seat? That is the more relevant question, then.

My rule of thumb is I can buy US Airways miles outright for 1-1.5 cents per mile (sometimes less). US Airways miles can basically do what UA or other big-name program miles do in terms of fancy-schmancy flying (both members of Star Alliance), with some notable exceptions (but in some cases, US miles are BETTER than UA ones). So that's the approximate value to me my FF miles, in terms of replacement cost. Thus, I look to get value out of my miles that exceeds that in my eyes, in terms of enhanced experience (I traveled around the world in first and business class for about $1500 when it was all said and done, for instance. Not a lot of COACH fares can do that for you. So I see that as good value).

What this means is I'd rather just pay for the US miles out of pocket and go for what works best for me: Virgin, Alaska, Southwest, whatever. Largely this means Alaska/AS works for me (based in Seattle), but I'm mostly loyal to my own wallet. I've tried United, but they don't work so well on my preferred routes, and I don't care about things like alliance status/lounge access/bonuses/mileage balances/shiny cards in preference to the costs I pay out of my wallet, given that I can buy the miles if I want them, or things like the convenience of nonstops/timings.

Others may look at it differently, as they should, because a lot of this is subjective. Some can't stand the thought of coach seats for 5 hours across country. Others wouldn't blink an eye. Some don't mind dropping 4-5 digit sums on plane tickets in the big seats at the front of the plane going around the world. Some blanch at the thought of spending what could pay for a car on a plane ride.

SanDiego1K

I wanted to reinforce the point about the convenience of UA compared to WN. I fly from SAN on UA, which goes from an adjacent corridor to WN. WN security is horrific. The line is often extremely long. You need to add at least 20 minutes to your airport time to be confident that you have time to get thru security. I also prefer assigned seats on UA to the process that WN uses.

gooseman13

OP - here is another question:

Are you going to have a very regular commute, in terms of the days you fly...are you able to buy tickets far in advance and have a general confidence that the days you purchase are the days you'll be flying?

Reason I ask is that, yes Southwest and their no change fees are flexible if you have a general idea when you're going to fly, but say 50% of the time change the dates closer in.

However, you lose the ability to fly on an earlier flight the same day on your cheap ticket with Southwest - Virgin allows you to fly standby for free, UA I think does, at least for their elites.

If you're up for it I could probably put together a survey to try to figure out which would suit you best.

InkUnderNails

This is a good point. I cover the problem by buying consecutive day tickets. The one I do not use will be used to pay for flights the next time I buy. I have several cities in which the jobs can be 3 or 4 days. I will fly Sunday in and use either the Thursday or Friday ticket to get home.

Technically this is speculative tickets, but I do not buy same day tickets, just consecutive days. For same day changes, I upgrade to BS.