Originally Posted by nixande
I was wondering if one could use this way to have status in Star Alliance but still travel as one likes.
Can you only pay UA flights with this, or also use it for other airlines from STar alliance?
You can pay for all flights that are bookable on ual.com or at UA reservations, which is basically UA metal and *A codeshares, the latter with the usual restricted fare bucket availability.
Which is no problem for
RTW, as he intends to travel 50k BIS miles on UA metal in paid F every year. It's not a problem to spend $20k that way, so in return for providing a $20k prepayment to UA, he'll get immediate 1K status and a "cashback" of 6 fully transferable SWUs ("worth" at least $3,000) that can be used on UA and LH metal. But he'll still be able to credit the miles for all UA metal flights to M&M, getting (as a HON) 350% status/bonus miles (no HON miles, though). Best of both worlds.