I just joined American's challegne program to get gold status. It seems somewhat easy. Are there any other airlines who offer this type of fast track to elite?

Most airlines will comp status. That's a little different than a challenge, which is done trough actually flying the airline in question over a brief period of time.

An airline's best customer is the frequent flyer. So, they are happy to pilfer such customers from other airlines.

The problem is, with elite status it's hard to leave your existing carrier -- since you would normally have to fly lots of miles before achieving the benefits you would be leaving by switching airlines.

So, airlines say "you're a Gold on American. I'll make you a Gold this year, too, to make it easy to bring your business over to my company."

If you want to switch your allegiance, visit the forum of the particular airline you want to switch to and do a search for "status match" or "comp status" .. you'll come up with lots of threads to give you all of the answers for the specific airlines.

Be warned that many airlines say they will comp your status only once. If you don't requalify, they give up on you -- they won't give you another shot at status without flying later -- so don't waste it. (This is different from challenges, which as I understand with American you can do a challenge several times.)

There are exceptions. Right now, Delta is actively soliciting other airlines' elites. Last year, Alaska had a similar promo for UA elites. It looks like those aren't once in a lifetime deals.

------------------
More Room Throughout Coach: the Website of Free Miles and Free Markets