After 15 years as a Premier Executive with United, flying over 50,000 miles annually, last year I flew only 30,000 due to illness. With my travel history, I had fully expected to be compted to Premier Executive for 2006, and will easily requalify as Premier Executive for 2007--probably by September. However, I received a "Premier" card in the mail last week. I wrote a letter to the Mileage Plus desk explaining the situation, and indicated that if I could not be compted to PE for 2006, with the expectation that I would requalify for PE for 2007, I would move to American's elite program. It is hard for me to imagine that a marketing department could be so inept as to not comp someone with a 15 year history--many of those years were >80,000 each. However, one never knows at United these days with routine service short-falls.

My question is how do I go about changing to American's program? If I am to be at the lowest tier of elite flyers with United, I might as well make the switch to American's elite program for 2006, since I've contemplated it for several years. I imagine that many of you have elite status at more than one airline. Has anyone used elite status at United to be compted at American? My question is how to pursue it. Thanks, all!

You should check out the status match master thread in MilesBuzz, but I can tell you that AA will not comp you.

You will have to do a challenge. More details are available in the AA forum, but if you earn 5,000 EQP (like EQM) within the 3 months after you sign up, they make you Gold (equivalent to UA Premier) and if you sign up for the Platinum challenge (equivalent to Premier Executive) then you need to fly 10,000 EQP in the 3 month period. Should be pretty easy to do with your travel patterns.

And if after 10K on AA, you realise you'd rather be back at UA, then you can get a comp to Premier Executive with your Platinum card.

PPM -

Call the Premier desk and explain your situation - how you were ill, etc. They should give you a one time comp to Premier Exec status for 2006.

It helps if you have some booked UA flights against your MP# when you call.

I did this last year - had some health problems in '04, and only made 2P. It took two calls and requesting to talk to a Supervisor on the second, but I was given 1P status "this one time only", and from that and a bunch of travel in '05, I made 1K for the first time this year.

Do you really want to go to LRTC? Make the call to the MP PE line.