Most of my flying this year has been made up of either short flights or long haul flights on award tickets. My days of flying 100,000 miles+ a year on revenue tickets are gone (maybe), and honestly I have NO clue what next year’s flying will be like for me. With that said, I need to decide if I want my final revenue trip of this year to be on a SkyTeam member or on a OneWorld airline. Either way, I will re-qualify for mid-level Delta or mid-level American and be a low level elite on the other.
I am currently sitting 8,000 miles away from American Platinum and 15,000 miles away from Delta Gold. The trip that I am planning will bank me approximately 16,000 elite qualifying miles. This will be plenty for mid elite level on either airline. I have always been loyal to Delta in the past and am a Delta Platinum, but tried to make the switch to the dAArk side this year. Despite my attempt, work prevented me from this as they required me to fly in and out of Bangor, Maine for two months, which is only served by US Airways and Delta.
So now I ask my readers, do I re-qualify for Delta Gold and keep American Gold status for 2014 or go for American Platinum and drop to a Delta Silver flyer. The ticket I am looking at is cheaper on Delta by about $400, but will require me to fly Economy (Economy Comfort on the transatlantic segments) whereas if I fly British Airways I’ll get to fly Premium Economy but have a long layover in London and spend more money on the ticket. A similar priced economy ticket is about $200 more than the current Delta Airline price.
Either way Delta Gold and American Platinum are each frequent flyer program mid tier elite level. We know with the US/AA merger in the works, the AA frequent flyer program is going to change and most likely a fourth (75K mile) tier elite level will be added. In my opinion the benefits are similar on both airlines for mid-tier flyers. So I ask you, what would you do?
