Hi all,

I am currently 17 years old and am starting to look at what airline will be the best for me to use primarily. I am starting to take more independent trips where I need to choose what airline I take and I also intend on going into a career field in business requiring a reasonably large amount of travel. Here is some information to help you help me. Thank you for your responses!!!

Nearest Airports (In order) ABE, EWR, JFK, PHL
I will likely be attending college in either Miami or Boston
I am looking primarily at Delta, United, and American
I will have 1000 DL Skymiles by the end of next week
I don't mind connecting when it will make the trip less expensive
My most important criteria are ease of gaining elite status, least expensive flights, and large network.

I really want to attain 10 million miles so I will be doing as much flying as I possibly can!

Thank you!!

Hi all,

I am currently 17 years old and am starting to look at what airline will be the best for me to use primarily. I am starting to take more independent trips where I need to choose what airline I take and I also intend on going into a career field in business requiring a reasonably large amount of travel. Here is some information to help you help me. Thank you for your responses!!!

Nearest Airports (In order) ABE, EWR, JFK, PHL
I will likely be attending college in either Miami or Boston
I am looking primarily at Delta, United, and American
I will have 1000 DL Skymiles by the end of next week
I don't mind connecting when it will make the trip less expensive
My most important criteria are ease of gaining elite status, least expensive flights, and large network.

I really want to attain 10 million miles so I will be doing as much flying as I possibly can!

Thank you!!

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_4 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B350 Safari/8536.25)

Your asking this in the AAdvantage Forum, naturally the responses will skew to AAdvantage.

what do you all like about AAdvantage though? and AA in general?

The best will vary depending on price, benefits, flight times, non-stop vs. connection, etc. and what value each individual places on each of those attributes. Look at the benefits of each program and determine which one works the best for you. Being 17 and heading to school, I would try them all and get to know the benefits of each program in the process.

Reading the FF section of each airline's web site, reading the FT forum threads for each airline, and setting up a spread sheet comparing their benefits will help you determine which one works the best for you.

Keep in mind that airlines' frequent flyer programs change, and as they do, the one that fits you now, may not later. AA will undoubtedly go through quite a few changes come next year. Good luck on that 10MM.

I appreciate that advice aaupgrade.

I've been a member of Delta, and UA before and I really prefer AA. I've had much better success with upgrades, treatment and just feeling more appreciated with AA than the other 2. My brother, however, swears by UA, although he has complained the benefits have been reduced since the merger with Continental. So I'm hoping that it doesn't get too diluted for AA.

Why?

Cheers.

Well reading some posts on FT you would think that the only thing worthwhile doing in life is flying around in a large tin can. To the OP, go for school in Miami. You will get more miles, be closer to the beach and always have great weather. But chose a major very carefully. Those $12 an hour Apple techs are barely making beer money.

Not supposed to ask the same thing in multiple forums

Please be very very careful with investing with DL. Not only are they pathetic with award availability, but their partners are also lousy. Research the DL forum well. Plus they used published fares for awards.

It is also rumoured that they will move to a revenue model like Southwest.

I think it is a tough call. The choices you have limited yourself are basically going to be the choice.

I think Delta is good domestically. Domestic upgrades mean everything to me. And I am mostly pleased on that. Despite the rhetoric here, I am VERY pleased with domestic award availability.

Internationally, I don't know enough about it nor care enough about it to matter. No matter what the level, I have enough miles to go wherever I want whenever I want to go. I do know at least a couple of 400,000+ miles a year international fliers that are happy with Delta. But if that were a primary interest of mine, I would have to reevaluate.

Then there are NON frequent flier issues. I appreciate Delta's hospitality. A LOT. It is a big deal to me. Of course it isn't perfect. I think they deal with IROPS in a most excellent fashion.

Then there are UA and AA hubs at ORD which is pretty much a reason for me to stay away from them. However, you aren't as likely to experience that hub as much. It will be interesting to see how AA/US handles the PHL airport in the future.

10 million miles will take a long, long time and nearly complete loyalty.

Welcome to FlyerTalk! As your query is not specific to any one airline, we've moved it to TravelBuzz for general discussion.

/JY1024, AAdvantage and TravelBuzz moderator

It is safe to say that there will be changes to the AAdvantage program in the next couple of years with the acquisition by US. No one knows what those changes will be; there is plenty of speculation on the AA & US boards.

Just remember this, most enhancements do make you bend forward

the University of Miami is by far my number one choice! It is a really beautiful school. I plan on majoring in Business (either Finance or Management) and I would like to go into consulting because I know how much consultants travel (my uncle owns a car service and says he shuttles consultants to/from Logan all of the time.

My grandfather was in the airline industry for 40 years. My dad has been in it for 25. I've been flying since I was a baby. Airports have often been considered a second home for me, and I can still spend hours watching planes go by. Flying to me is more of a passion than just a mode of transportation, and I figure that there is no better goal for me than shooting for that near-impossible 10mm

Until you get that education, choose a specialty, score that road warrior job, and launch yourself into a career, it's WAY too premature to care about carriers. Especially the domestic versus international nature of the business that chooses you to join it, will weigh heavily on the "right" choice at the time.

During your career, you will also (probably) have to adopt to increased use of videoconferencing, avatars, and non-travel sorts of business support. And monopolistic airline behavior to devalue the loyalty you think has some benefit to you, and not asymmetrically to the airline only.

Tell me you've seen Clooney in "Up in the Air" and think it's glamorous. It's not.

A better tactic might be to train for a career that will make twice as much so you can PAY for first class or your own jet for fantastic vacations. Or make sure you're attractive enough to rich women to get THEM to pay for the trips. Then mileage programs are for the peons.