Questions and Answers

I am about to secure Premier silver status with United, but after some poor customer service experiences I’m not sure I want to keep flying with them. Later this year and start of next year I will be doing International business class travel and I don’t think United has the best in flight product either. I spend a lot of money traveling and it feels at times like United goes out of their way to tell me me my business isn’t appreciated…

Is American or Delta any better and would elite status on another airline be more worthwhile as I work my way up?

Also, as I work my way up the tiers will my progress toward gold continue on Jan 1, 2017 or would I start back over and have to work toward silver again? I assume its the latter but can’t find the details anywhere.

Nick, your elite qualifying counters will reset when the program year ends so you would start from scratch. The only exception is Delta that allows for the rollover of elite qualifying miles greater than the benchmark for your last status (so if you have 30000 eqm, 5000 miles would roll over after 25,000 miles qualify you for silver medallion).

DL tends to have the reputation for the best operational airline but I’d focus more on your travel patterns to see what airline you want to pick. Given how similar most FF programs have become I’m not sure that is currently a way to differentiate them.

Assuming youre based in NY based on your handle, AA and DL are good options with DL being operationally better, like [USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] pointed out. Both have a decent network of partners so you have quite a few options for travel. I suggest making a decision based on where you fly to most often and what your goals are with the miles you’d accumulate. Personally, I think the best use of miles are for international travel on partners.