Originally Posted by
ISTFlyer
1- No, during your first year, you could only qualify for Elite Plus with the normal format. For Elite, you would need to meet the 1 TK international flight + 15000 status miles on TK requirement. If you are planning to achieve 40000 miles in one go on partners, don't opt for the status match
2- No, the status collection date has nothing to do with your program joining date. It's based on the date you qualified for your most recent status.
3- Not sure if you could retroclaim miles before joining the program for *A partner flights but you could certainly do it for TK and AnadoluJet flights.
4- Usually they are fast, but YMMV.
Thanks for the answers. My main purpose in going for the status match route rather than regular qualification was so that I would have *G during my next few flights in which I would gain the 40k miles. So I either have to live without *G during this period , or use this as a temporary *G and credit elsewhere... sigh...
Regarding (2) I infer that this is not a calendar year based programme, but one gets the next level of status once miles in the previous 12 months reach the required level.
Regarding (3) it seems the answer is "yes" in principle, but there may be individual exceptions for particular *A partners: All my flights are from November onwards so hopefully will be ok, but maybe I should check with TK...
https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-i...nd-conditions/
(My original plan was to go for Asiana, but it seems that programme as a *A might well go away if/when they merge...)