How does status matching work?
 

Hey guys, i recently learned about status matching. Im still a little confused about it so I listed a few questions here. Any answers will be appreciated!

I have United Premier Status.

1. What airlines can I match with that?

2. Do all airlines offer status matching?

3. How long will I have status for after matching?

4. Also, I read that you can status match once in a lifetime. Is that true for all airlines?


- Brian

1 Very few. And it changes from time to time
2 No
3 Varies
4 Varies

Look and read here
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...er-thread.html
http://statusmatcher.com

The grass in not always greener on the other side

1. It also depends on which level of United Premier status you have and perhaps how you earned it. For example, if you only have United Premier Silver status (the first level), and earned it purely from having Marriott (hotels) Platinum status, some airlines may ask for a statement showing how much you flew (and spend, in the cases where they count spending), and in that case if you didn't have statement showing you flew and spent what usually is needed to get to that status, they might not match.

2. A lot of airlines offer "challenges" instead of status match. Ie, they don't even care what status you have somewhere else, they just want you to prove that you're going to be flying enough in the short term (say, 90 days) to be worth extending status to you for a year or whatever. So the "challenge" could be something like "fly this much in 90 days and we'll give you X status for the rest of this year".

3. While it does vary, the most common period is in the range of about a year or so, very roughly. It may depend on when in the year you do the match, because it tends to end at an upcoming normal status year end. Some may be shorter and some may longer, but that gives a ballpark of reference.

4. While it does vary, it's very common for there to be such a limit.