Wwyd
 

If you were in my situation, what would you do?

I recently received a new "territory" (I use quotes because it's more a collection of states, instead of the NW or New England) that I'll be traveling to for at least the next year. My "territory" includes Colorado, Arizona, Tennessee, Arkansas, & Louisiana - so geographically, I'll be all over. A typical week might look like this: WAS-PHX-DEN-BNA-MSY-LIT-BTR-WAS. This being the case, I think that accumulating segments will be important.

I have status on a number of airlines, but wouldn't mind starting on AA/UA if those best served me (my company does have travel discounts with UA/US/AA/NW - I'd also get a status match on UA or sign up for the Plat Challenge on AA). I never want to get onto a US plane again, so I'm already crossing that option off. I am leaning towards using CO/DL but am not sure which program I'd consolidate my miles in. Nearly 100% of my travel are on full-Y fares because they're bought usually within 48 hours of departure.

So my question is this; if you were in my position, which airline would you want to use?

Thanks for all feedback!

You're going to be using a mid-continent hub a good deal of the time, and presumably you're going to want to get home at the end of the week, not get stuck at the hub owing to storms or ATC delays. Looking at your "territory" I would say you should either stick with AA for DFW or look at CO for IAH. I certainly wouldn't depend on UA/ORD to get you to all those far-flung places -- lots of medium and small cities involved, I presume -- from WAS. And I don't think US is relevant here at all, even though AZ is in your mix.

I'd think about CO - Y-Up.

I can see why UA/ORD would be suboptimal, but is UA/DEN that much worse than AA/DFW or CO/IAH?

Another option is NW. Reliable hubs (DTW, MSP and MEM), lots of upgrades, and also gets miles for CO and DL flights.

DEN isn't that bad - I actually like the airport a lot. There is only one nonstop flight out of DCA (my preferred airport) and it's at 5pm - so, not ideal. I could obviously use IAD, but that's a major hassle for me to get to. It would be nice to check out the 777 that operates on flights 301 & 903 though...

If you are booking full-Y most of the time, bank with NW (better bennies for top-tier), and fly CO. You can still Y-UP on CO if you are a NW Elite (and vice-versa). That way, you get the better FF Program, and fly in the superior F cabin.

Ended up getting UT, CO, TN, NV, AR, LA - so I'm leaning towards DL.

Upgrades may be difficult to come by out of SLC until you reach platinum status. I am only silver and only get upgrades out of SLC if I fly out at 6:30 am or a really odd route. My husband is platinum and gets upgraded on every segment.


YMMV

I am actually hoping to get about 65k more MQM this year (just barely giving me PLAT) - so hopefully the upgrades will come through!