Originally Posted by Cambridge_Kiwi

I lurked here for a couple of weeks figuring out how to status match, with recent success so thank you.

Full story: I had Air NZ Airpoints membership when I moved to the USA a year ago, so kept putting all my *A flights against that. I hit NZ Gold in Dec 08 which is the highest I can get without flying a stack of NZ operated flights (most of my flying for work is USA domestic). Benefits as an NZ Gold flying domestic are fairly minimal so I started looking for USA carriers to status match me.

I'm happy enough with Star Alliance (all the networks/airlines give pretty measly service these days) but generally no *A will match another *A so I went after Continental OnePass thinking I could get into a USA based *A through their alliance swap. They said they don't match NZ... So then I went after NW thinking I'll use my once-in-a-lifetime status match with an airline that is disappearing anyway.

I faxed all the right documents to the fax number (as per instructions on this forum) requesting NW Platinum on the basis that only that level would give Skyteam status high enough to match the lounge access of *A Gold.

I was giving up hope when after 2 weeks they sent me an email notification that I was now NW Gold. I get the status for the 08/09 membership and the 09/10 membership (i.e. through to Feb 28, 2010).