BOISJC744

Via the website, no. Thanks to Joanna's help, yes.

Schultzois

Based on what I've read here, I gather my chances of getting a Gold match from my BA EC Gold Card are pretty good, while any form of M&M match is next to nothing. I have a couple questions for anyone here who might know, though:

(1) Will they create a new member year as soon as they do the upgrade? I am not a DC member yet, but will plan to sign up and then request the match per instructions here. But I do want to understand how long my matched status will be valid for, and what the timeframe for re-qualifying will be.

(2) My main aim is to be/keep Star Gold with at least ONE Star Alliance program (but flying most all of them), and earn redeemable miles I can use for travel on pretty much any Star partner. I buy mostly Business and First fares, which from my reading suggests M&M or DC are probably the two to go with (they give the 100% and 200% bonuses to paid J and F travel). Are there other *A FQTV programs I should look at?

I'm now based in South America (*A is weak down here with the loss of RG, but hey, what can I do?) and I fly regularly to US and Europe. Plans also forming for South Africa and Asia, with a RTW not out of the question. I used to be UA MP and went back and forth between silver and gold but won't even consider them any more as they treat even their F pax like Y pax if you don't have Gold, but they don't give you Gold any easier as an F traveller (on partner flights) than as a Y traveller.

Efrem

Yes, or at least that's what happened to me three weeks ago. My Gold year started Sept. 12, when they processed the upgrade; I have twelve months from then to requalify. (My card shows an expiration date of October; I assume that's to cover a possible delay in sending me a new card if I requalify at the very end of my status year.) They also zeroed out my balance of status miles toward the next level, but since I only had about 2,000 toward Silver at the time (the excess over what I needed for Blue+), I feel this was a fair trade.

iwillflytheworld

Although DC is probably a better program than M&M for paid premium travel (in terms of redemption opportunities), if you travel LH often (or more often than bmi), being a "native" elite is always convenient. Also, you need to qualify for SEN only once every two years. Of course, the amount of miles to get SEN is more than double what is needed for bmi gold, but given your travel pattern it shouldn't be a problem.

Schultzois

Thanks for all the answers... good to know. I wouldn't say I am likely to fly LH any more than any of the others - well, except for the fact that I guess they're the only European *A carrier flying down here (Buenos Aires) right now, so maybe I would, but not so much more as to make a difference.

On the other hand, I don't expect I'd be on a BMI flight very often... is that any problem for retaining status? I know in oneWorld you have to fly your program's metal at least 4 segments in a year, and I think that goes for all of the ow carriers. BA enforces it rigorously, but AA doesn't really enforce it at all. Is there anything like this in *A/bmi?

modularmayhem

Not sure about other *A carriers, but BD certainly dont have this policy.

Schultzois

Okay - thanks.

psyflyer

Joanna status matched me to BD Gold and am currently at LAX in UA's First lounge about to take off for SYD. Thanks Joanna^

holtju2

Just had my status matched to BD *G as well. I would have qualified by the end of the week without any help.

The status year shows currently as a calendar year. Is the first status year until the end of 2008?

It makes quite a difference on my points earning.

----

Just to update on this. It did change the following day to a 12 month period from the day the status match was active.

Now just waiting my UA QUP A fares to start posting to my BD account.

Traveloguy

Not necessarily true.

For example, my partner flys regularly in European J transiting either MUC, FRA or ZRH.

Let's use the following example (which I suspect many Euro flyers out there do): If you took 10 return flights credited in to LH that would net 100,000 including the SEN status bonus which also counts towards elite or status miles, i.e. that is

8,000 (2,000 miles per sector) x 1.25 (25 % status bonus) x 10 (number of return flights) = 100,000

This would give you SEN status for 2 years and 100,000 miles to burn.


On BD, 8 flights on LH/LX would net you 38,400 which would also give you BD*G. To keep the comparison fair, let's go with 10 return flights which would net a total of 48,000 status miles and 60,000 destination miles to burn on flights.

With this in mind, which programme would you pick? Yes, cash and miles would be an option to make up the short fall, but at least on LH you would not have to hand over the cash in the first place just to get the premium seat on your redemption.

The only place where BD is better is on long haul F or J.

Things of course change when you get above the 55K mark, but the above example flyer would not have reached this milestone and it would not be for another 3 return flights via FRA, MUC or ZRH that the 55K bonus would start to kick in.

Food for thought when picking a *A programme.

totti

Why not get a match with BD to have *G for a year and then crediting miles to M&M and become SEN? As Traveloguy pointed out M&M has some advantages e.g. requalification only every second year very good award availability etc.

SuperFlyBoy

Understood, but how can one have LH elite benefits when using the BD*G card? (mileage credited to BMI?)

Is there a method to get LH to recognize that you are SEN as well as the other *G program?

gpan

Sent in my NWA stuff (I commute to london regularily) and was matched to BMI Gold.

I decided to go with BMI, but not totally sure if the results will be much different than going with M&M, BMI sure seems to be having lots of website issues lately (still can't get my number registered to my profile)

Not to mention that LH has no history of matching status at all. Interesting suggestion Totti....

Angeleno228

bmi Status matched me to Gold from Delta Platinum Medallion. A big ^ for that! Hopefully I'll be able to use them on some of the ex-BMED destinations.

Thank you diamond club!

The Specialist

I emailed the address on this thread a few weeks ago with jpegs of my BAEC Gold card and a spreadsheet of my 2007 completed and booked / planned flights and heard nothing back. I called the DC number on Monday this week and was told to write in with the above info. I did so by the last post on Monday and today on logging into my DC account today, I see I'm now Gold.
The membership year is from the date of upgrade (in my case 31/10/07 to 31/10/08) so with the BMED routes and, if necessary, switching my CAI and DME runs to BD, I should make enough miles / tier points to retain gold in both programs.

A big thanks to the folks at DC for the swift upgrade this week. ^