Anyone had experience of status matching into Virgin Gold recently? Most recent evidence I've found was someone getting a status match from BA Gold to Virgin Gold in January 2018 by sending an email to customer services with details of their BA status, statement of flights taken and evidence of a future Virgin flight in PE or Upper.

I've been a member of Virgin's frequent flyer program since the 1990's and was gold status for a number of years last time being around 2012 I think. For one reason or another (actually some bad flights) I switched allegiance to BA. I fly 4 or 5 times a year in business and occasionally in first. Aside from the few bad experiences I had I quite liked the Virgin product, especially Upper and I think the PE seats are much better than BA's equivalent.

Anyway I'm looking at a trip to Florida in July and thinking of giving Virgin another go. Upper seems either unavailable or silly money for the I want to go so it will probably be PE this time and booking via Delta seems half the price of booking on Virgin even though the flights will be Virgin metal. So second part of question is whether anyone knows if I try the status match is a codeshare booking acceptable as evidence of a future Virgin flight or will the booking need to be direct with Virgin?

Thanks
Chris.