I know I am going to get flamed for this but here goes. I do not think that CO should advance Elite status to anyone. It is hard enough getting upgrades, which in my opinion is the number one reason for getting the status Most of us who are at whatever status have had to sit in the seat to get to said status. If for example, someone with 23K miles calls and asked to be advance and CO did agree then, said quasi nonelite buys a fare higher than another actaul silver elite (who purchases a lower fare class) who has rightfully earned the upgrade. The actual silver elite would not get the upgrade.

There are many reasons one might get flamed here. Expressing this particular opinion is NOT one of them.

Of course in my situation posted above, I was not expecting CO to advance me elite status per se, but was asking them to recognize the flight that I had ALREADY taken that was to have qualified me as a higher-level elite, but for some stupid reason didn't make it over to CO. Never figured this one out -- my OP number was on the boarding pass, and my return flight posted just fine...

To be perfectly honest, I have done a few MR's to attain Gold status this year. I've always been a Silver, but I was over the 25k Silver threshold thanks to a LAX-CNS trip in July. Once I hit the 33k mark, 50k seemed within reach via a few cheap MR's. If CO had advanced me Gold status at, say,
45k EQM, I would most certainly not have spent the $ for the MR's to reach
50EQM.

I agree that Elite Status should be earned by BIS miles and not given away, even if you are only 500 miles short of the next status level. That's my two cents.

[QUOTE=ijgordon;6782540]I don't know what these people who claim to be successful said to the reps on the phone, but my experience is that it won't happen. I had actually FLOWN the segment that would advance me to Gold, a r/t JFK-CDG on Air France, but due to some fluke, the outbound never posted. Not only wouldn't CO advance my Gold Status, they wouldn't even accept my proof of travel to manually post the miles until a 30-day period elapsed. I called several times and got the same answer.
QUOTE]


I am taking a LAX-PVD MR next week. I am flying a lot this month and I wanted to attain Gold Elite status prior to my LAX-CLE-EWR & EWR-DTW-LGW (NW) trips later this month. I am travelling these segments with my significant other & wanted the hope of a companion upgrade on the domestic legs of the trip. Some people are addicted to crack - I, on the other hand, am addicted to flying.

I was successful with both advanced Silver and Gold status this year. I had been a UA flyer for years, took last year off, and started from scratch this year on CO.
Silver: Once I had around 18k EQMs earlier this year and a booked flight that would carry me over the 25k EQM mark, I called the OPSC. I explained that I already have my 25k flight booked and would really appreciate getting Silver status TEMPORARILY. The rep put me on hold for a minute and came back saying that she'll give me silver until June 30th and I have until then to earn it fully. This was around May and my flight was in June.
Gold: I reached around 42.xK EQMs and decided to make a MR for gold. I booked the ticket for early November and again called the OPSC. The rep told me that she can't do that but that a supervisor may be able to. I talked to the supervisor, who looked at my booked flight and half jokingly asked if I was doing that flight for status. I said yes and that I would really appreciate temporary gold status for that flight. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes and came back saying that she set it up so that I have temporary gold through the middle of November (2 weeks out from the call). She closed with "we appreciate your loyalty" or some variation of that.

disclaimer: I didn't think of this myself, I read the advanced silver status on a post on flyertalk in Dec 2005 and figured I would try myself and once gold came around, there wasn't any reason to ask for that.