Well, I'm finally getting around to converting from ROP to another Star Alliance airline due to the forthcoming changes in ROP. When I'd looked at this situation just a couple of months ago, I'd come to the conclusion that Turkish Airlines was the way to go. However, now that I'm about to dive in and start accruing miles on TK I came across this:
Turkish Airlines
Turkish Miles & Smiles has been routinely offering status matches and challenges for the last few years. Unfortunately, if you call and speak with phone agents or try to find a landing page on the Turkish site, you’d believe nothing is available. However, according to this
FlyerTalk thread, you can request a match via
this web form.
The match is now reportedly only good for a four-month trial period, during which one international segment flown on Turkish metal is required to extend the status for a period of one year. Then you must earn 15,000 status miles on Turkish flights alone during that year to extend the status for an additional year. Lately, however, flyers are having a hard time getting Turkish to honor the challenge agreement after completing 15,000 status miles, and their accounts are not being updated.
The Turkish match has become a convoluted, complicated and unclear quagmire that could result in you crediting a lot of paid flights to Turkish and not earning the status you think. InsideFlyer
has a great write-up of the process — undertake it at your own risk.
source:
https://thepointsguy.com/guide/airli...es-challenges/
This sounds like a classic bait+switch, and I don't want to end up in the quagmire the author describes. Perhaps it's better to just go with a more stable/established *A member, even if it's harder to obtain and maintain status. My second choice was EVA Air, and I do fly them often to and from LOS.
What do you all think, anyone else do the switch yet, or anyone just staying put with ROP and absorbing the degradation of the program?