For some reason the Continental website is not working for me, so I'll ask my questions here:

1. Can you pool miles together from multiple Star Alliance carriers in order to earn Star Alliance Gold status?

2. When you qualify for CO elite status, how long do the benefits last? The entire upcoming calendar year (Jan-Dec), or 12 months starting on the day you qualify, or other?

3. Do we know yet which CO status (or statuses) will qualify as *Gold?

1. No

2. The program year, which is through 28 February 2011.

3. CO Gold and Plat will be Star Gold.

The benefits are officially for the following program year. So if you hit 75K EQMs today you qualify for the program year Mar 1, 2010 - Feb 28, 2011. Plus they give you the benefit starting immediately until the program year starts.

Do you have to earn all of your qualifying miles (e.g., 75K) between Mar 1 - Feb 28th in order to become Elite, or can you earn your status during any 12-month period?

Thanks for all the replies. A few more questions:

I have a few international trips coming up next summer (CFU & MHG). I'm worried that I won't be able to earn CO miles for these trips. If I want to earn CO miles, then I am required to book these trips through CO, correct? What if CO doesn't fly directly to my final destination, but only partially, then I should still book through CO and hope they offer me an affiliate airline for the final leg(s) of my trip, correct? (I assume that I would still get miles flying with a CO partner.) Now, what if the CO website gives me no results when I type in a destination (this happened when I typed in CFU)? Would I be SOL in terms of earning CO miles for this trip? What would you do?

No. Effective with travel on 27 October and later all CO flights earn at least 100% EQMs in OnePass.

I strongly suggest you read the FAQ in this forum, or use the search button. Or browse through continental.com

what you're basically asking is a complete walk-through onepass, and although I'm sure some FTers generous with their time will help you, maybe you should do your homework first.

You earn qualification points/miles during the calendar year for the program year that starts the following March 1.

And this seemes to have been lost in the weeds...

YES, you CAN "pool" miles from different *A carriers to reach Gold.. as long as they are all credited to the one program at time of earning.

I fly on a number of *A airlines.. and credit ALL to my NZ FF account fr'instance.... Unless CO is radically different you should be able to do something similar... I would find it hard to believe that CO would not count *A partner flights toward *G status....

That is pooling travel on different carriers into a single mileage account. It is very different than pooling the miles accrued in the various programs (e.g. 10K on CO, 20K on UA, 20K on US = 50K *A and *G status) for a single status level. And the latter is generally what people mean when they ask the question that the OP did.

Ugh...I was afraid of this. Since my yearly travels usually begin towards the end summer, it will be hard to accrue enough miles to earn any Elite status by the end of the calendar year. I know such miles would not expire as long as you keep your account active, but is there any benefit to keeping miles earned in the prior calendar year if you don't reach Elite status? I suppose you could still redeem them for discounted travel and other products that cost miles.

You are probably right on that sbm12..^

Just thought I'd make sure there was no misunderstanding of what the OP CAN do....

Huh? If you always have exactly the same yearly travel schedule, then it doesn't matter which twelve-month period is used for qualification purposes - you fly the same number of miles in the twelve months beginning January 1 as you do in the twelve months beginning any other date.

They are two different things. Elite miles are just used as a measure of how much you flew in the Jan 1 - Dec 31 year, the next year they are reset to zero again as a counter for the next year. Your elite status is based on what level you hit before Dec 31st.

Whenever you fly, you are given miles that can be redeemed for rewards. These do not reset every year and you can accumulate them from flying, credit cards, car rental, etc. All of these activities contribute to your total number of miles, which you can redeem for flights, etc. They are irrelevant to your elite status.

Hope this helps.

Thanks. This is very helpful information. I didn't realize they were two different things.

My apologies for the rudimentary questions. For some reason I am unable to view the CO website. Firefox tells me, "Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete."