Most Prestigious FF Card/Level
 

I was wondering which FF card/level would be the most prestigious/hardest to obtain/be? This is just out of plain curiosity.

I think you have to lump into two categories:

Lifetime levels (Million Miler, etc)

Annual levels (CO*, United GS, etc)

What you probably are looking after are the CO* and United GS-type levels.
CO*'s are pretty impressive to me (they are almost automatically CO Plats).

Delta has an Executive Partner level with VIP handling & lots of irregular operation assistance along with significant upgrade priority.

AA has Concierge Key, probably similar to United's GS.

I believe that CO has a Chairman's card - been discussed occasionally.

In general, the *most* prestigious is probably by definition one that we know nothing about :)

Many airlines give their current/former execs crazy perks like unlimited FC seats for X years after leaving company.

Delta has an invitation-only level called Executive Partner (called EP on FT). There is no published criteria for membership. From browsing the DL forum I understand an invitation is hand delivered but I'm not sure if that's just folklore. With the new Diamond Level with DL I'm not sure if EP will continue but since it is supposedly based on revenue and not miles flown I suspect it will stay and will continue to be a secretive club.

Concierge Key is not quite the same as Global Service.

Which one is better?

QF has Chairman's Lounge. But it seems to be dolled out to every politician in the country - so I'm not sure I'd like to be in that special lounge. I believe that the perks are good - over and above QF's highest level of Platinum.

In my opinion one of the hardest to obtain, based on annual levels and not on revenue or "by invitation only" is the Lufthansa HON Circle. You need to accrue 600.000 HON qualifying miles in two years.

One Mile at at Time

Read the post written by luckycoins about Concierge Key vs. Global Service.



Halothane

Wow. This was all very interesting. Thanks for all your input guys :)

BA Premier - not even attainable by flying but controlling ca. £2m p.a. in revenue to BA. Around 1200 members worldwide and membership must be approved by the BOD.

Here in the US there's UA UGS, AA Concierge Key, Delta Executive Partner.. all more interesting than CO *.

I'd say my favorite status is Avis Chairman.