Virgin America / VX Status Match for AA Elites
 

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/freque...united-elites/



Virgin America today launched a status match program for elite frequent fliers with American and United. It’s a match/challenge combo, actually, where you’ll be matched outright until April 30, 2013 and offered the ability to extend your status through the end of 2013. First, here’s the chart of how the American and United elite tiers match to Elevate Silver or Gold:

They’ve lined the levels up fairly, in my opinion, where a 50,000-mile flier on either American or United gets Elevate Silver status. For Gold, you either need Executive Platinum status on American, or Premier Platinum (75k) or 1K status on United.

Here are the benefits of Elevate Silver and Gold:

There are a couple of exceptions to the perks above in the T&Cs for those members matched. During the challenge period (now through April 30, 2013), you will not receive the 25% off discount codes, nor will you have reciprocal benefits (lounge access, primarily) on Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia that require a physical membership card. Cards will not be issued for matched members. Also, matched members will only receive one complimentary pass to the Virgin America lounge at LAX.

To have your matched status extended through the 2013 program year, you must:

It’s a nice break they’re giving for Virgin America Visa Signature cardholders. The language isn’t overtly clear whether existing cardholders get the break, so I’ve reached out to their media relations folks for clarification and will update this post when I have an answer.

Application link: Virgin America Visa Signature Credit Card

The current bonus mile offer for applying and getting approved for the credit card is 20,000 bonus points after the first purchase. You can earn up to 5,000 additional bonus points if you transfer a balance within the first 30 days.

While they don’t have a complimentary first class upgrade program for elites, Virgin America does open up purchased upgrades earlier for Silver (12 hours) and Gold (24 hours) members. Upgrades to Main Cabin Select seats are, however, complimentary and follow the same timeframe/window. While waiting for that upgrade, elites can book Main Cabin Express seats (those near the front) at the time of booking.

Sorry Delta fliers… no match for you. American and United elites, click here
for the status match page.
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/freque...united-elites/

What complete rubbish. Their points scheme is a joke, they fly to a small handful of destinations, and the only benefit is the opportunity to pay for an upgrade before others? No thanks, I will pass on this one. Virgin America won't be around much longer.

Branson recently claimed that they are in advanced talks to join an alliance. I wonder if this isn't related... they need to show their program is evolving to better target frequent flyers?

On that note, Skyteam would seem to be their partner, since they are going after *A / OW customers.

Virgin America only flies to LAX and SFO from DFW. Don't see myself qualifying for a challenge before April just to get a fancy looking card that I can use...to travel to LAX and SFO.

Now, if they want to match to Virgin Atlantic, maybe I'll listen to the phone call. It would still ring a few times before I picked it up though.

I sent them a status match requested , they replied 14 days for verification and will let me know

One more thing, never flew virgin, is it worth it?

As someone who does most of their flying out of SFO, this is a very tempting offer. The hard product is far superior to AA (at least currently) in both first and economy, and prices are generally lower than AA.

And are rapidly bleeding cash because of it.

That was my first thought, but perhaps they are gunning for OW/*A and want to be able to demonstrate to those alliances how many FF they can get back by bringing VX into the fold?

I just can't get excited about those perks. While joining would allow me to fly direct LAX -> PHL while still avoiding US Air, the idea of committing to doing it every single time in coach on a very long flight sounds horrible. We are not allowed to charge seat upgrades to our clients, so any upgrades I would get would be purchased out of my own pocket.

Was worth a read and now I know I feel confident passing.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A403 Safari/8536.25)

It's Virgin Atlantic that wants to join a global alliance, not Virgin America. Two different companies.

+1

No free upgrades to first? Limited domestic flights? Minimal international partners?!

Count me in the 'pass' category as well...

Are you sure about that?

Those are listed as partners on the route map page
http://www.virginamerica.com/travel/flight-routes.html

But From a frequent flyer mile partnership it's
Virgin Australia - Earn and Burn
Virgin Atlantic - Earn and Burn
Hawaiian - Burn
http://www.virginamerica.com/frequen...levate_airline

I was tricked by the marketing speak on the VX website. Definitely a poor collection or mileage airline partners.