You may have read that I’ve been waxing philosophically lately about my air travel habits. Frankly, no one values my time as highly as I do, and I think it’s time that I stop wasting time on connecting flights except when that’s the only way to get somewhere. Living in Washington, DC, that makes United (in my opinion) an attractive option for my travels. I did a little research on Flyertalk.com regarding United’s elite status matching practices and decided to pull the trigger. I downloaded my current American AAdvantage and Delta Medallion statements, and attached them to a short email politely explaining what I was looking for. I sent the email late Monday night. At 1:30PM on Tuesday, I was Premier Executive with United. Only catch is that I have to fly 20 segments or 15,000 miles between now and late November. That won’t be a problem, but given that I already have 4 other trips booked with other airlines during that time, I may have to suck it up and find a reason to take an extra trip so I can meet my end of the bargain. In other words, I’m in the market to take a good mileage run. If you have any ideas for high mileage and low cost destinations from DC, send them my way. 🙂
Aside from saving me time, moving a chunk of my travel to United will give me a new travel topic to blog about. I hope you’ll join me as I explore the Mileage Plus program, and watch how things evolve as United and Continental move towards becoming one airline. Should be fun.
Good luck with United. I’m 1k and I think the mileage plus program sucks and the United airplanes are lousy: very uncomfortable even in first or business class. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it more than I have. When my 1k status ends in January, I’ll be flying all the other airlines……..
I’ve dabbled with MP before….5 years ago or so. It worked ok. I like AAdvantage better, but I’m just looking to get out of the connecting flight business, unless absolutely necessary. I’d go with US Airways, but I just don’t trust them to not toy with Dividend Miles more than they already have. That said, at least US doesn’t participate in StarNet blocking. 🙂 I have to admit, there are times when I really think about saying to heck with all this, and just flying Southwest as much as I can. But I’m not there yet. And they can’t fly… Read more »
The real question is how your trips are set-up, mileage wise. If they are short hops along the east coast, then a segment run would be best, and also the easiest to construct. Fly from BWI to a small airport on the west coast, and on a weekend you can easily get at least 6 segments with 0 effort in planning.