Questions and Answers

Are there any opportunities to status match to a star alliance airline at the moment? I’m Uk based BA Gold but moving to NYC and will have US travel so it’d be good to get status the easy way!

Hi there. I’d answer your question in two parts. I personally recommend to stay, use and requalify for BA, especially if you are in the States. So many times I see The US folk struggling to get requalifications to get to the top gear with United or AA and still not have the priveledges they deserve. BA Gold is not revenue based at the moment and you get all the perks of using the lounges in the states even if flying economy as well as your points multiplier. Reward flights via BA, Even if within the states also appear a much better value to me than any other programmes (per actual physical Buck spent getting those Avios). If you need private guidance as to cheap BA gold requalification when you are in the States – plse PM me. It takes a good few days to put an itinerary together, so not very easy but achievable extremely cheaply. Talking the cost of the cheapest Business return flight, say, from London to NY – it is that cheap!

As for you actual question, there is a status match website somewhere out there…. I looked two days ago and it seemed you can get to match BA GOLD to top tier Al Italia and then when you get Al Italia’s card you can match it to Top Tier on Turkish Airlines (star alliance). Then you could probably nag United into submission for their Gold Membership. I’m in the process of matching to Al Italia, the process takes around 3 weeks. We shall see how it goes.

Avios certainly *can* be a good value within the States, but not always. Remember that each segment of a flight is calculated separately. So a simple NYC-LAX flight would always cost 12,500 AA miles each way at the saver level regardless of whether you took the non-stop or had to change planes in Dallas or Chicago. But with Avios if you don’t take the non-stop, it actually costs more:

JFK-LAX = 12,500 Avios
LGA-ORD-LAX = 7,500 + 10,000 = 17,500 Avios
LGA-DFW-LAX = 10,000 + 10,000 = 20,000 Avios

And if you wanted (and could find) a premium cabin seat, while AA will charge 25K each way in a 2-cabin plane, BA will charge 3x Avios each way.

Rich, if you’re moving to the States and will get a US Social Security Number, you’ll be eligible to apply for US credit cards and maybe you can beef up your stash of AA miles way.

I wouldn’t squabble over 5K avios here and there. You would not get into lounges with Premium AA status but will with BA you will. My game is flying in style, flying as much as possible and accumulating AVIOS by any other means than CC’s and lounge access is a huge part of it. I could easily munch through a bottle of free champagne and proper complimentary food buffet (not some carrots and soup). I can also invite my spouse to enjoy all of the above. I like my facials at Heathrow (as much as my spouse does) and free Cabanas/overnight hangouts at foreign airports, even if flying economy. Put all those comps together and it is well worth wasting those 5K extra avois you are paying over and above what would AA otherwise charge. I sense a great push on this blog towards signing up to CC’s, which is fine, if it is your and this blog’s game. Getting CC’s is the road to debt and never actually flying again.

Thank you [USER=1393]@AlexGBBAGold[/USER] for those words of wisdom, I’m not sure how we have managed without you here before.

Rich if you get a US Social Security Number you can get access to many lounges in the US true credit cards.

Read this article by Lucky to get you stared.
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/08/24/best-credit-card-for-american-admirals-club-access/[/URL]

This will you not get you access to the AA F lounges which are called Flagship lounges.
[URL]https://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/airportAmenities/AAFlagshipLounges.jsp?anchorLocation=DirectURL&title=lounge[/URL]
But as you can see there are not many of them, will depend on your travel pattern.

As for the status match website that [USER=1393]@AlexGBBAGold[/USER] does not seem to want to provide you a link to is.
[URL]http://statusmatcher.com/[/URL]

Good Luck on your move and feel free to come back if you have any more questions.