Thanks for the great advice on this thread. I just set my dad up with HP's Trial Elite program. He is going to be a lot of traveling coast to coast and I wanted to get him the benefits of elite early. The info on the post was invaluable to making this happen.

I just sent in a request to US for matching Gold status. Even if they do go BK, it will still give me acess on the Star Alliance airlines for at least a year. I figured it was worth burning the one time request given what is going on at US.

I prefer the elite perks over the miles, so I figured that it was not a bad move.