New to OW
 

I've been reading thru the OW forum and am considering a switch to OW after 20+ years in UA Milage Plus (1K for last 10+ years and Lifetime Premier Exec = *A Gold (=AA Platinum equiv)

Who do I contact at AA to get comp PLAT (even tho my 1K is EXP equiv)and once done do I earn the 100% staus bonus from then on ??

Am considering a AONEx soon... is BKK-SYD-JFK-EZE without a stopover a valid routing ( I would return to USA and Australia later in the trip for other segemtns) ??

Thanx

1. AA doesn't comp anymore. You'd have to do a challenge. Meaning you'd have to fly 10K points within a certain time frame and you'd get Plat which is valid till Feb next year. If you want to retain Plat, you'd have to fly at least 50K points/miles by Dec 31, 2004. Sign up for AAdvantage first and just prior your first flight, call Customer Service and ask to be signed up for the Platinum Challenge. Once you qualify, you'll get 100% base bonus after the first 10K points.

2. If you fly BKK-SYD-JFK-EZE.. you cannot fly back to Australia. But you may via USA if your first JFK is just a connection. An option is to fly BKK-Europe-NYC-EZE.. then you can do EZE-USA-Australia-BKK.

Official policy across OW carriers is this simply doesn't happen. But that doesn't mean it's unheard of, particularly in the competitive North American market.

While the AA scheme may better suit your needs, I fear that you'll prove less successful trying to blag a straight status match from them - particularly now that *A has cheapened its own scheme through the status match offer.

If you want to do it the hard way, sign up for the AA Platinum Challenge (plenty of threads dealing with this if you do a search in this or the AA fora).

You could try seeing if BA would status match you (do a search on this in the BAEC forum), but retaining BA Gold may prove a challenge.

Alternatively, a creatively-routed AONE* should take you from Bronze to Platinum in the QF FF scheme. But again, there's the consideration about how you retain it come renewal time.

I'm sure others wiser than myself will have some advice to add. Best of luck.

I think that is not correct. If you do a Platinum challenge right now you would be Plat till Feb 2006 and to retain Plat for 2006 you'd have to fly 50K QPoints by Dec 31 2005.

Viajero is correct. Any Platinum challenge done after June 15, 2004 provides Platinum status through Feb. 2006.