Frequent Miler on the Air - Shortcuts to airline elite status | Ep237 | 1-13-24

Episode Date: January 13, 2024

Whether you want to earn airline elite status from the comfort of your couch or switch alliances without starting from scratch, this week we talk about how you can score shortcuts to get the status you want. 00:00 Intro 02:28 Giant Mailbag 02:51 Greg-a-culpa 04:43 Nick-a-culpa: Air France actually does have an award chart https://viewfromthewing.com/air-france-introduces-new-award-chart-free-stopovers/ 07:09 T-Tip 11:53 Card Talk: Frontier Airlines World Mastercard https://frequentmiler.com/f9/ 22:00 Mattress Running the Numbers: SimplyMiles stack for Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express https://frequentmiler.com/simplymiles-spend-100-at-holiday-inn-or-holiday-inn-express-earn-930-aadvantage-miles-loyalty-points/ 29:04 Award Talk: AA enhancements 29:50 Apply systemwide upgrades online 30:24 Earn miles when paying for upgrades 31:20 Cancel basic economy and get something back for $99 32:13 Loyalty Point choice benefit 34:58 Main Events: Shortcuts to airline elite status 35:00 What is airline elite status? 38:36 Lots of shortcuts exist 39:36 Having credit cards to get perks 41:56 Earning elite status through credit card spend 47:11 Shopping for status 49:56 Status matches 50:47 American Airlines status match 54:44 Delta status match 56:05 United status match 58:18 Alaska status match 58:38 Turkish status match 01:05:58 Southwest A-list status match 01:08:47 Buying status 01:13:27 Other ways to get elite status 01:17:00 Air France: earn XPs without flying 01:18:29 Question of the Week: Is it safe to complete spending for stuff on 12/31? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, shortcuts to airline elite status, also known as pissing off the most frequent of flyers.

Whoops, whoops, careful there, yeah. This is the fast track to make somebody angry pissing off the most frequent of flyers. Whoops. Whoops. Careful there. Yeah. This is the fast track to make somebody angry because they got status by sitting on an airplane for, you know, 50, 60, 80, 100,000 miles a year. And we're going to tell you how to do it without sitting on the airplane for hours and hours and hours

if you don't want to. Right. But don't worry if you're one of the people that has earned airline elite status the old fashioned way with a particular airline. We'll show you how to piss off customers of another airline by getting a status line there. So there's something for everyone here. I hope something for everyone.

That's right. All right. Very good. Don't forget that if you want to jump ahead or you want to go back to something, we always have the timestamps in the show notes. So you can scroll down to the show description and find those timestamps to figure out the segments that you want to see. Also, wherever you're watching this or listening to this, please, if you like it, give us a like, give us a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe and enable notifications. So you find out when we post new videos. That's also helpful, by the way, because we mentioned, I think, last week that we do a monthly live session. It's the first

Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. We do a live question and answer. And so you can jump on YouTube and see that. But if you're not subscribed and with notifications enabled on YouTube, then you might forget about that. I mean, sometimes I almost forget that it's the first Wednesday at 9 o'clock until somebody else on the team reminds me. So, so subscribing and enabling notifications on YouTube would be helpful with that, but wherever you're listening to the show, it's also helpful so that, you know, when we upload the new episode. All right. And when, and when Nick reminds you to like the show, like, don't, don't like listen to the whole thing and then like it, just like it right now. And then later, if, if you didn't like the show you can undo your like

but hopefully you'll forget to undo the like and so we're all happy we're banking on we're banking on here yeah thank you thank you very much for that hopefully that gets you know maybe it gets counted in the algorithm how many people hit like and maybe they forget about the people that i'm no no let me not even plant that idea like it now like it now i'm gonna i'm gonna like mine right now oh very good. Well done. Well done. All right.

So let's drag out the giant mailbag. Can you drag it out? Okay. Yeah, I'm dragging it out right now. It's a heavy one. We've got a lot of stuff going on in the giant mailbag today. We've got two mea culpas and a T-tip. And we're not talking like golfing T-tip. We're not talking about making a pot of tea tea tip.

But we'll explain what this tea tip is soon. First, the two mea culpas. First is a grega culpa. So last week, I introduced the idea of hogwash versus cat bath. The idea was that hogwash meant something. We didn't believe a prediction was likely to come true. And the reason that we use the term hogwash is because if you ask a hog if they're going to wash, and whether they say yes or no, don't believe them.

They're not going to wash. And I brought up the other term, cat bath, because I said, well, if you ask a cat, are they going to clean themselves? And they say yes. You can believe it because they groom themselves all the time. And, you know, I was listening to last week's show and I realized that your reaction was like, wait, cat bath, hogwash, which is more likely? I don't know, because you were thinking of like putting a cat in a bathtub, right? Yes. Yes, of course I was. You said cat bath. What else would you picture when somebody says cat bath? Right. Right. So I really should have said cat grooming. So

that's my mea culpa. I really meant cat grooming because I also know from personal experience that if you try to put a cat into a bath, into a bathtub, they defy the laws of gravity. So you could literally hold a cat above the tub, let go of the cat, and instead of falling down, they'll fall 90 degrees sideways and get the heck out of the tub. They won't get a drop of water on them. This is not one week, but two weeks in a row,

we have talked about hogwash and cat bath on this show now. I never would have pictured cat bath coming up two times in two weeks, but there it has. It has, folks. It has. Don't try it. Don't try this at home home i don't know how you do predict that nick right i know i didn't i definitely didn't and if i had it wouldn't have been cat bath because cat bath doesn't actually happen either but it's okay all right not grooming get grooming got it grooming yeah exactly all

right all right so that was the Greg-a-culpa. Now we've got a Nick-a-culpa. Oh, uh-oh. Okay. A few weeks ago, Air France Flying Blue had a mistake fair, and Nick complained about the fact that they canceled those award flights because he said, well, how are we supposed to know it was a mistake because they don't have award charts anymore? Well, Gary Leff, author of View from the Wing, wrote in and said,

contrary to the concern that Flying Blue abolished its award chart and then says the pricing is a mistake when there's nothing to reference against, they actually brought back their award chart a year ago. And in fact, he's right. They did. I totally forgot about that. I meant to update the post for that. Thank you, Gary, if you're listening for enlightening me on that.

I had missed that. Did you realize they brought back an award chart? Am I the only person who either missed or forgot it? Yeah, I think I may have realized it at the time, but I remember thinking, oh, this is another one of those that says it's starting at, basically. It's saying what the minimum prices are.

But in this case, I think they're mostly sort of right. If they're sort of the equivalent of the Saver Award, I think that's mostly what you'll get is what's on the award chart or on the exception chart. They have an award chart and then an exception chart where prices are higher than the award chart, but still, there are charts that's that's good that's something so if there's any if there's any defense for me it's that in the past there have always been some roots that priced out like kind of wonky now and then and so like i would not be surprised maybe i would be wrong but i would not be surprised if there are still some that will sometimes, even though they're not on the promo rewards or whatever, that will price less than whatever the pricing from says.

But if it doesn't anymore, then I guess that's good-ish because then we know what we can count on, I guess. So, yes. Well, either way, I didn't realize that that was out there. Yeah. And further in your defense, you know how they recently reduced business class award pricing to Europe from the U.S. to 50K points one way as the lowest? Their award chart hasn't been updated. It still says 55K. So proving that the chart is relatively meaningless, but it exists. So I guess I did not recognize that. So, so Nika Culpa. That's right, Nekakolpa. My mistake on that one.

Thank you for the correction. All right. And now we're on to the T-tip. So a little background first. I know Q-tip. What's a T-tip? Yeah, well, just a minute here. A little background on this topic, though.

So, as we know, we've talked about many times, Turkish, they're miles. They have some great award prices, both for their own flights and for Star Alliance partners. And you can transfer points to Turkish from programs like City Thank You Rewards, Capital One, Bilt. But if you've never booked a Turkish award before, when you go onto their website and try to search for awards, which you can do as long as you have an account, most people, I guess not everybody, most people get a message if they try to search for two seats on a flight, a little thing pops up saying, the first award ticket can only be issued under your name. If you want to have it issued for a loved one, please contact the nearest sales office. And now there's no option if you want to have it issued for someone you dislike, just for a loved one.

But anyway, regardless, the idea is that you could book one person, just yourself online. And then if you want to book for more than one or for someone else, it says online that you have to contact the nearest sales office. So someone who goes by T, now we're up to the T tip, they go by T, messaged us and said, the Turkish app, so the mobile phone app, allows you to book for any number of passengers, even if the website does not. While I haven't booked Star Alliance flights like this, I can confirm it works flawlessly for Turkish metal. So let me say, so I jumped on, I downloaded the app and I did some searches and sure enough, I can now search

for multiple award seats at a time, which I couldn't do before through Turkish's website. So that's a great tip on its own. And then in a follow-up message, T says, after booking via mobile, now when they look online, now they can search for more than one on the website. So apparently, you know, just getting through that initial booking for booking at all gets you past that message and then you can work the website the way it's supposed to work. So that's a good tip. That's a very good tip. That's an excellent tip.

You know, I'm also curious. So I got my curiosity here and now I want to answer this question that I don't know the answer to as I as we record it, but hopefully will by the time it publishes. And that is that. So my wife actually isn't I don't think she has a Turkish miles and smiles account. So she's a good guinea pig because I can create and help her create an account. And we're flying United tomorrow. And so I wonder if she credits the flight to Turkish, if having like some activity in your account other than transferred miles, I wonder if that would make any difference. I mean, it probably wouldn't. But but I guess I'll find out because I'll try that out and see if I don't know, maybe that somehow unlocks your ability

to book for others, too. But the app is a great tip. So if you're having trouble with Turkish, try the app. That was a great tip in and of itself. I also found, by the way, when I was trying to find information about my flights recently, when I flew Turkish in December, I couldn't get the website to show the flights for anything, but the app did. It was really a pain. I had booked through LifeMiles and I needed the ticket numbers for each individual passenger in order to view the itinerary on the app. But I couldn't get the itinerary to show up on the website at all. So the app worked.

The website didn't. So in terms of selecting seats and all that, I had to do that in the app. So the Turkish app is not it doesn't function remarkably better than the website does, but it does function better. So the app is a great tip there for a lot of things. But certainly if you're able to book for other people on Star Alliance Awards, that would be awesome. Yeah. And personally, it makes a difference right off the bat because Turkish recently came to Detroit. They have a flight to Istanbul from Detroit. And so I've been looking periodically for award availability and I want to go with my wife.

And so searching on the Turkish website has not worked. I can, you know, alternatively look on tools like points. Yeah, we'll let you search for Turkish awards. But sometimes it's helpful to look directly to confirm whatever you're seeing elsewhere. And so now I can do that. So that's great. Very good. Awesome.

All right. So that is our entire mailbag, I think, for today. So good tip from T-Tips there. Let's talk about card talk. And so now that we talked about Turkish, which was a lot of fun in our giant mailbag, we're going to talk about the second most fun airline in existence. And that is Frontier, because this week's card talk is the Frontier Airlines World MasterCard.

Yes, this has to be the most asked-after card. No, I don't think anyone's ever asked us about this card. So why are we talking about it, Greg? Well, yeah, because this show is about status matching, and this card has some interesting things about it. The thing that made me think about this card was Stephen Pepper recently posted about what his status, what levels of elite status he's going to pursue this year.

And one of the things he mentioned was that he was possibly going to look for frontier platinum status. And that's because that comes with wave pet fees. So he could bring his dog onto the airplane for free. And so that would cut down the cost of flying quite a lot. Okay. so that's what made me think about this card. And let's get into the details. So first of all, it's $89 a year, no foreign transaction fees. You earn five points per dollar for Frontier flights, three points per dollar at restaurants, one point per dollar everywhere else. You also earn one qualifying point per dollar spent, that's qualifying towards elite status. Having the card enables family pooling, so you can kind of merge your points together with family members in order to book awards. So theoretically, that could wipe out the $89 annual fee right there. And you have waived award redemption fees starting at $5.60.

So that's kind of interesting. So any fees that are associated with booking award, including that TSA, $5.60 fee is apparently waived. I haven't seen that on any other airline that I can think of. Miles don't expire as long as you have at least one purchase every six months. And you get priority boarding so that you can get on that great flight faster than others. There's some more things to mention here. Right now, so there's a deal right now where card members can earn elite gold, so the gold status level, by spending $3,000 on the Frontier MasterCard. And this runs through the end of February of 2024.

So I'm mentioning that here because, again, this episode is about shortcuts to status. So here's a shortcut to status. Just get the card and spend $3,000 by the end of February. Gold status normally requires 20,000 qualifying points. What it gives you is you don't have any change or cancellation fees as long as you make the changes more than seven days from departure. And you get a free carry-on bag. You get a preferred seat at check-in. These are member only, though. If you're flying with others, the no change cancellation fees apply, but the bags and preferred check-in don't apply to the others on your reservation.

Now, what about Stephen's thing? So he wants to get platinum status because that's where the pet fee waiver comes in. Platinum status requires 50,000 qualifying points. So he could get that with $50,000 spend on this card if he wants to. We're going to talk later in the show about what he really should do. But what does that give you over gold? So it gives you the same no change or cancellation fees. It also gives you a first check bag. It's free for both you and everyone else on your reservation.

Free care on bag, again, for both you and everyone else. And preferred seating for both you and everyone else, and preferred seating for both you and everyone else, and the pet in-cabin fee waiver. So yeah, I mean, so the nice thing about these elite statuses with Frontier is Frontier makes most of their money by like, they don't charge much for the base fare, but then they charge you up the wazoo for all these fees and everything. And so it seems like elite status is a good way to get around those fees. It is. You're right. So that's nice. And, you know, Spirit is very similar in that.

And so it certainly can save you some money. And also, you know, a tip for anybody who doesn't know, if you book these low-cost carrier flights at the airport, I think there's an additional fee you don't pay. So if you're booking a cash ticket, I think it's cheaper to go to the airport with Frontier and Spirit and Allegiant, and I assume probably Breeze and Avalo, the other low-cost carriers, because there's some fee that they charge online that they don't in person. I do want to correct one thing that Greg said. We have a Grega Culpa. And so when you said waived award redemption fees starting at $5.60, I double checked because I felt like that had to be off a little bit. And what it is is the award redemption fee is waived.

So you'll pay the taxes starting at $5.60. So you do still pay international taxes or domestic taxes. And in fact, it says you pay the taxes with your card. And then so you have to actually pay the taxes with your card in order to get the redemption fee waived, which I don't know what Frontier is. I'm glad you corrected me before the show was over. There you go. Well, I double checked because I was like, they can't really be waiving taxes, can they? So yeah, I had to look that up.

So anyway, I had to look that up. So anyway, easy enough. The way those things get marketed, it's easier to mix those up. So, I mean, the gold and the platinum status, I think you got to consider whether Frontier serves enough destinations from wherever you are. I mean, that's question number one. Like, is Frontier at your airport? And where can you go on Frontier from your airport, right? Absolutely. I also don't have a good grasp on how much are these points worth.

So if you're spending money on this and earning Frontier points, how does that compare to earning, let's say, even 2% cash back on a cash back card? My guess is it doesn't compare very well. That's just my guess. But if you do fly Frontier anyway, at least certainly that first year thing, spending 4,000 to get the gold status might be worth it right there. Later on, we're going to talk about status matches

and other ways of getting elite status. I think it would be better for almost everybody to overspending a tremendous amount on one of these cards to get elite status with Frontier. I will say that I don't know what Spirit's policy is as far as the pet fee waiver. I assume if there was one, then Steven would have mentioned that the Spirit status might be worth it. But I would just, I don't know, without actually researching anything,

I would probably, if it were me, lean towards looking at if I were going to do this, if I weren't going to do everything else we're going to talk about. Let me clarify that because everything else we're going to talk about is better. But if I was not going to do those things, I would probably be more likely to do 50k spend on a Spirit Mastercard for Spirit Gold status. And the reason I say that is because Spirit has such a bigger network, I believe anyway, than Frontier, certainly based on the searches I've done, it seems that they have quite a bit more. And there's the chance that if their merger with JetBlue actually does go through, despite a challenge, then maybe that'll translate to something good with JetBlue.

So I would be more likely, I think, to go the spirit angle, but I guess probably if you're considering the Frontier one, it's because they serve the roots that you want. And so if they do, maybe on the flip side, keep in mind that Frontier has offered a paid status match the last several

years. And I don't know whether it's been up to platinum status. I can't recall off the top of my head. You had to pay for it, but yeah but but you didn't have to spend fifty thousand dollars in order to get it so no no you didn't and again we'll talk in detail about that later on in the show but um yeah let me just say one thing uh that differentiates this from the spirit card i believe i believe the spirit card like if you want to earn gold status through spend you have to

spend the full fifty thousand dollars i think so um with with this one they've shifted it used to be that way but they've shifted it to where you're earning qualifying points for every dollar you spend and so if you have actual flights where you're earning qualifying points you wouldn't have to spend the full fifty thousand,000 to get to platinum status. Actually, I think it's the same with Spirit. But I think it is qualifying points. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, anyway, so yeah, maybe if you're a very regular Frontier flyer,

maybe, but probably not, because you can probably do better with the rest of what we'll talk about. All right. So there you go. Oh, sorry. About a card they know nothing about. All right. So there you go. Oh, sorry. About a card they know nothing about. One thing I should mention is points pulling, though. Points pulling is nice.

Now, is that a benefit of elite status? Because I only see that in our notes under benefits of the card. I think you also get it with get it with elite status. OK, because you do with spirit. So and that that is valuable. I think I recently had to fly around trip with spirit and I points And points pulling has never really come into my mind with these things before. But then I just recently did that with Spirit. And I suddenly have a useful amount of points because we had to book last minute flights.

So they were not real cheap. So I have a usable number of points now, thanks to being able to pull them. So that's a potential advantage there. I also really like that you only need silver status to get free changes and cancellations as long as they're more than a week out. That's a good feature. Okay.

All right. So we'll talk more about elite status later on. There is our card talk on the Frontier Airlines World MasterCard. Let's do some number running. Mattress running the numbers. So this week's mattress running the numbers we've got a simply miles offer out american airlines simply miles if you're not

familiar is a mastercard card linked program whereby you can earn american airlines miles and of course then therefore also american airlines loyalty points towards late status when you link offers to your master cards it doesn't have to be an american airlines master card you can put in any master card you want on the Simply Miles site to sync up the offers and then use one of those cards that you have synced with whatever offer it might be. So the new offer that's out is spend $100 plus at Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express and earn 930 American Airlines Advantage Miles and loyalty points. So what do you think, Greg?

Is that like a hot match? Should I go book a Holiday Inn stay? advantage miles and loyalty points. So what do you think, Greg? Is that like a hot mattress? Should I go book a holiday and stay? No. So if you think of a thousand, let's round it up to a thousand advantage miles and let's extremely, let's be, what's the opposite of conservative? Generous, generous, generous. We're going to be extremely generous and say these are worth about two cents per point to get these advantage miles. And so you're talking about a $20 rebate and that's being generous. I don't value the miles and loyalty points that highly to call it that much, but still to do simple math in your head,

you wouldn't go spend a hundred dollars to get the equivalent of a rebate. You can make this better though. You can stack this with portal rewards, go through whatever the best portal is you can find. For example, I looked this morning when we're recording and TopCashBack has 10% back at Holiday Inn. And I also want to mention that when you're looking for the best portal,

look under things like IHG, Holiday Inn. So look under both the brands and the overall rewards program because they list those differently and sometimes they have different rewards. Yeah, and speaking of shopping portals, also, if you're one of the many people that joined Capital One Shopping because of the hot referral offers, don't forget to check Capital One Shopping and both. So you've got to check the app on your phone. You have to check the desktop version of the site because the rates there can be different. And on the desktop version, don't just search for IHG, hit the filters and look for the checkbox next to IHG because sometimes you'll see better targeted offers. You see more

than one rate. Sometimes you might see there's 4% on one button, 6% on another and 10% on another, whatever it might be. So make sure you check and compare those. The reason I bring up Capital One Shopping though is because I have gotten a number of not, I wouldn't say super frequently, but a number of good targeted IHG offers. I've seen IHG in my inbox as high as 18% back at times. So it's worth keeping an eye on those emails too. Although that said, since that big referral promotion, the emails have chilled way out from Capital One. I have not seen, I don't think I've seen a Capital One shopping email since New Year's. So that's-

Oh, really? I get them all the time still. Oh, you still do? Okay. None of them have been super amazing. I, in fact, got an IHG one this morning for 12%. So- Well, I mean, 12%, that's still pretty good.

I'm going to pick 10% actual cash back from Top cash back over 12% gift card cash back from Capital One. That's fair. So, yeah. Anyway, okay. And you could also theoretically stack this with some bank-linked offers like Chase offers. So, for example, most of Chase cards are visas, but they do have a few master cards, and that's what you need to do the Simply Miles deal. And so if you got an IHG cashback offer on your IHG credit card, that would be kind of ideal. The IHG Premier card, first of all, just earns 10 points per dollar at IHG properties right off the bat. And then if you're also getting cash back from Chase, simply miles, miles, and earning portal rewards, you can do really well. So Nick,

let's say you had all those things stacked together. Would you go out and book a one night stay for $100? $100 and one cent, if you could, to stack all this? No, no, because you still wouldn't get more than what you're paying. However, if I needed a one night stay, it certainly might swing the needle in favor of IHG because if we, again, generously count the Simply Miles offer as $20, if you got a 10% back offer, a Chase offer on your Chase card,

then that's another $10 back. And if you go through a portal for 10% back, that's another 10. So now we're at $40-ish. It's a little extra generous. So maybe adjust down a little. I mean, let's call that $30 to $35 back on 100. That's a good rebate. And that's not including the IHG points that you're going to earn naturally just by using your IHG card and by staying in an IHG and if you have IHG elite status and all that. So by the time you add all that up, the rebate is going to be very good, I think, on a cheap stay. If you've got a stay that's around $100, it's going to be an excellent rebate that will

probably make it worth staying at an IHG over staying at whatever else your other option was in that case, or a Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express in this case, because I think that's all that qualified for the offer. Also, if you've booked an IHG stay, well, a Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express stay with points, you might want to just take a look at the math and say, would it be better to rebook it as a cash stay instead of a points-based stay? True, true.

And final thing we should mention on this, and a lot of people will know it, but I feel like it's always worth mentioning when we talk about portal rewards with hotel stays. I find that there's frequently a misconception that you need to book in an advanced purchase rate or whatever, non-refundable, something where you pay right away in order to get portal rewards. And that's not the case. You can click through TopCashBack to Holiday Inn and book a stay for like six months from now. And it could be one of those rates that you pay at the hotel. You don't have to pay it in advance. So you don't have to lock yourself in with a non-refundable booking to earn the portal rewards.

You won't get that 10% back until after your stay. But in my experience, generally speaking, those track properly and you will get the cash back down the road. It'll be a while after your stay. So don't look for it like two or three days later. It's going to take a bit after your stay is completed. But usually that works the way it's supposed to. Yeah. Yeah. Also, you know, portal rates change all the time. And what you're going to get is the rate that the portal showed at the time you click through and booked your stay, not the rate that happens to be showing at the time of your actual stay. That's irrelevant. Right, right.

Good point there. OK, so we said don't mattress run it. But if you've got a need for a one night stay, it's worth checking if there's a holiday and that works or it might be worth checking your existing reservations, whether you made those with cash or points and comparing what you could do with this. OK, so I think that brings us over a crazy thing this week. We're going to go to award talk. So for this week's award talk, we've got the American Airlines enhancements. Now, normally when I hear the word enhancement, I get nervous because when a loyalty

program says they're enhancing something, it's rarely an enhancement for the customer. It's more often an enhancement for the program itself or their bottom line. But in this case, it's a little different, right? These are mostly pretty positive. Yeah, it really is. There are a few things that I'm not going to go into details about where they did make things worse, but only for people who are not members of the Advantage loyalty program. So, you know, just join, you know, and then you get around that. So let's talk about the things that are actually better and relevant to everyone who is a member of the Advantage loyalty program. First of all, if you have high level status, so if you've earned these system-wide upgrades, you earn them from Americans Milestone Rewards, which you earn through earning all these loyalty points, thousands and thousands of loyalty points. Anyway, if you have these system-wide upgrades, you're going to be able to

find and apply upgrades online. So that's a big enhancement that'll make using those system-wide upgrades much easier, I believe. If you pay cash to upgrade your ticket, let's say you booked economy and upgrade to first or whatever, you will now earn miles and loyalty points for paying for that upgrade. That's more of a fix, I'd say. That's something they should have done from the beginning, but their IT wasn't ready for it, I think. But better late than never. I'll give them a pass on that. Yeah, exactly. Good that they got that they fixed it. Their IT wasn't ready for it, I think. But better late than never. I'll give them a pass on that. Yeah, exactly.

Good that they got that done. Exactly. You will theoretically be able to redeem miles for partner airline upgrades. So let's say you're flying one of American Airlines partners and you want to use your American Airlines miles to upgrade. Theoretically can do that. I wouldn't expect much there i'm expecting that they're going to have rules like you have to have the most expensive economy class in order to do it and probably lots of miles we'll see but yeah um if you book basic economy you will now be able to

cancel and get trip credit uh but you have to pay a $99 fee to do that. I mean, I still think that's dirty that they do that, but I guess that's better than the current situation where you don't get anything back. So if you bought an expensive basic economy ticket, or even if you bought a relatively cheap one, I guess you get something rather than nothing. I still think that it bothers me that's very, uh, it bothers me that

airlines do this, that they take your money and then they keep it, even if you don't use the product and they resell that product to somebody else. Most of the time, I mean, you know, they, they, they fill that seat and at least in many cases anyway. And, and so they get to charge for it twice. It's, I mean, I understand why. But the, yeah, I mean, the flip side is theoretically, they're charging you less for basic economy. And that's the deal you're making. Yep, yep. So there you go.

But one of the more interesting ones to me, it's not a big deal, but it's interesting, is that they have these new milestone rewards. So with American Airlines, you earn elite status, you have to earn a loyalty points, which you earn from almost every type of earning American Airlines miles. You earn loyalty points that go with them usually. Now, when you get to 15,000 loyalty points, a reward you can select is a thousand more loyalty points. So it's sort of a tiny little leapfrog to the next level. The next one of these doesn't happen until you get to 175,000 loyalty points. And then you can get 5,000 loyalty points towards the next level.

And then the one after that is at 250,000 loyalty points. You get 15,000 loyalty points towards the next level. So those are such small numbers. I don't think it moves the needle for anyone in any, you know, big way, but it's nice to have. Yeah, exactly. I think that's it. It's like a nice, you know, I think the chances for most people that 1000 loyalty points is going to make an important difference in whether or not they reach the next level of status is like, it's gotta be like a fringe number of people that are going to be 1000 loyalty points short if they don't have that extra

bump from the 15 K. So that's why I'm like, eh, eh. That said, I, I expect a lot of people are going to be picking it because of the current milestones at those low levels are are useless for people who already have status. So if you're just trying to renew status, they're useless. Whereas this at least has some use. It gets you that tiny bit closer to that level that you're seeking. So that's good.

Yeah, it is good. And they're great. I mean, I'm glad if they're going to make enhancements, make them this way rather than the way that I expect the word enhancement to go. So, you know, I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth. I just feel like that's it feels I guess the I think the smart thing from a person who manages the program standpoint is that it feels to the customer like it's better than the seat coupon that they can't use because they already have status anyway. But from a realist standpoint, most people are probably going to overshoot whatever the barrier is for status by a thousand or more points anyway. So it really isn't going to cost them anything to give you an extra thousand loyalty points because you probably aren't going to end the year at exactly 50,000. It's going to be 51 or 52 or whatever else, probably something for most of us.

I mean, those of us that are playing games to get there, maybe it'll help. Maybe. Hopefully. All right. So that that's a word talk. So that would be good overall. I think net positive anyway for American Airlines Advantage members. That brings us to this week's main event. Today's main event shortcuts to airline elite status. All right. So first, what is airline elite status?

I'm going to just describe it in very, very high level terms. Basically airlines want to, or many airlines will treat you better if they think of you as a better customer. They have, most of them have tiers of elite status. So often the bottom tier is called silver status, the next tier gold, and next tier platinum. But that actually varies by airline as well. So American likes to call the first level gold instead of silver,

and then the next level is platinum instead of gold, and so on. But most of them have tiers like that. And then to earn status, it used to be with almost all airlines that you earn status based on how far you flew. They would say, like, if you fly 25,000 miles with us, you get silver status. Most of them now have changed to, we don't care how much you fly with us, but what we care about is how much you spend with us. So we want you to spend, you know, $5,000, $8,000 or whatever with our airline. And we'll give you this, this level of status is how a lot of them work today. And then there's quite a few that are sort of a mixed model, like United especially. They still seem to very much care how much you fly, but they also care how much you spend

with them. And then typical benefits. At the bottom tier, like silver tier level, you generally get a free checked bag, preferred seating, priority boarding, chance of free upgrades, you earn more miles on your flights. Mid-tier benefits include all of the above, but better. For example, you'll earn even more miles on your paid flights. Sometimes they waive certain fees, like maybe they'll waive, uh, same day, uh, change fees. Um, and often you'll get, uh, airline Alliance status. So, you know, uh, if you get, for example, uh, star Alliance gold status, that'll get you into business class lounges when flying star Alliance carriers, even when you're flying economy.

There are some exceptions to that, so I'm not going to get into details. And then at the high tier, you have all above but better, but you often also have things like upgrade certificates. So you can upgrade at the time of booking. So you buy a cheap, let's say, economy fare and upgrade to business class, you often get better customer support. You may get better treatment during irregular operations. So if your flight is canceled, they might automatically rebook you on the best alternative and things like that.

So it can be really, really good and important for those who really fly that much to get those kinds of benefits. And then also at the very top tier, some airlines just have like really cool individual perks. And like I've talked before about how JetBlue at the very top tier, they give you four blade helicopter transfers from a New York City airport to Manhattan. And so that's really fun. So that's a background on what this is all about. Now, normally to earn status, you really have to spend a lot with the airline, but we have lots of shortcuts we're going to describe. Yeah. You know, and that's, you know, as somebody personally who never, like I, we talked recently

about my kind of my points and miles origin story, and I was never a business traveler who was traveling on an employer's dime. So I never chased airline elite status because I was never spending that much money with the airline. And certainly as things changed from, okay, you get status from how many miles you fly to instead you get status based on how much you spend with the airline. Then I was like totally out. I went from probably never going to chase it to like, oh yeah, no, I mean, that's not for me. But we've seen over time that these paths have gotten easier, right? I mean, by some measure anyway, especially for those who can spend on credit cards. And that's something I can do. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so that brings up the first cheat or the shortcut is having credit cards or credit card spend. So first, having

credit cards. It used to be that there were certain super high-end credit cards that gave you really nice elite status. That's no longer really a thing. But Delta has brought it back at a relatively inexpensive level. So they brought this new thing called their head starts to their credit cards, where if you have a Delta Platinum or Delta Reserve card, you get $2,500 qualifying dollars towards elite status just for having the card. And so based on 2024 elite requirements, if you had two of these cards, let's say a personal and a business Delta Platinum card, you'd have $5,000 qualifying dollars towards elite status. And that would give you silver000 qualifying dollar head start. That's gold status. That's that mid-tier status we talked about just for having those cards. Just for having four credit cards, right? Now, that sounds easy, but they're not cheap.

So there's definitely a relatively significant expense going into having four cards, but you could get those four. Yeah, the Delta Platinum cards aren't too bad at $250 each. So you're talking about $500 to get Silver status, plus each year you'd get a companion ticket with each card. So they could be well worth that $500 even before counting the value of silver status.

I should mention that Delta also, if you just have one Delta reserve card, it gives you just automatically sort of a light version of silver status. So you're just below silver status as far as like for upgrades and things, but otherwise you're getting basically the benefits that silver status gets just for having the one card. So yeah, so Delta is giving

you some things right now just for having credit cards. There's many airlines, though, with through credit card spend, you can earn status. So I know American for sure with credit card spend because they got the new loyalty point program, right, where you can earn status. So I know American for sure with credit card spend, because they got the new loyalty point program, right? Where you can, you earn essentially one loyalty point for every American Airlines mile you earn on your credit card, or certainly through the, also through the shopping portal or the Simply Miles offers that we talked about. So by spending on your credit, and we'll get back to the shopping, I think, but so AA, you spend on your credit card, every dollar you spend, you get a loyalty point. But it's a little bit different with the other

airlines that offer this, right? Because AA, it's really simple. You spend a dollar, you get a loyalty point. But with Delta, it's not quite like that. Yeah. So Delta, you want the Delta Reserve card and every $10 gets you a medallion qualifying dollar. Now you might look at that and say, oh, well, that's only one-tenth as good as American, but American requires many more loyalty points than Delta requires qualifying dollars. So you can't really compare them that way. You have to look at each program on its own to say how good or bad is that. JetBlue, you earn tiles with spend. I think you earn a tile with each $1,000 spend, something like that. All three of these, and actually I should mention Frontier and Spirit also, you can earn top tier status from spend alone just

by spending a lot on credit cards. So, you know, I know people who have like businesses that have nearly unlimited amount of spend they can throw on credit cards. And so they can earn these top tier statuses just so easily through that. Yeah, and if you obviously do also travel, then you don't have to hit the high spend thresholds of like, you know, the imaginary ones where we say,

okay, you need to spend X amount in order to get this status. Obviously, if you fly some, you're going to earn some when you're flying also. So presumably if you want the status, it's because you travel some. And so you won't necessarily need to do a hundred percent of it via credit card spend, but you, you could. Yeah. Yeah. Now United, I just mentioning them for completeness here. They, they do allow you to earn qualifying dollars from spend, but very, very few. Uh, and, uh, they have caps on how many you can earn. So you kind of, if you want to achieve a high level status, you have to have like a bunch of United credit cards. And, um, they really seem to be like, for them, elite status from spend seems to

be more of an afterthought than they really seem to want people to be committed to spending on United itself. And that's different from American Airlines and Delta, for example, where they seem to be, they seem to like you just as much if you never step foot on their airplanes as long as you spend a lot on their credit cards or other things. It kind of makes sense, right? I mean, I don't know why United hasn't gotten the memo on that, right?

Because, I mean, if they don't ever have to provide the benefits because you don't get on a plane, then giving you status is just giving you something to make you feel good, I guess. If you're not going to travel very much, if you're not going to travel at all, certainly, you're not going to travel very much. So they're not going to have that much in benefits they need to provide. And they're going to stand to earn from selling those miles to the bank. So I think it's smart business that they have focused on that. So I'm not surprised. I'm surprised that

United has not, like I said, gotten the ball on that. So I think people who fly with United a lot probably have more of a sense of exclusive something or other when they get to those top tiers versus now with American and Delta where it's more transactional. It's just like… Yeah, that's true. However you make us money, we're happy to give you this benefit. So I'm not saying one is better than the other i like a approach best from my point of view but um but i could see where uh united might think theirs is better we should have mentioned southwest also southwest you earn uh 1500 tier points they've changed the the spending thresholds for these for 2024. So starting now in 2024, you get 1500 tier points for every $5,000 in purchases on one

of the Southwest cards. It used to be every 10,000 in purchases. And I think there was a cap and I don't think there's a cap anymore. So if you're somebody who spends on Southwest cards, Greg mentioned before that sometimes there are people that own businesses with nearly unlimited spend. And I've met people before that spend $125,000 a year for a companion pass on a Southwest card. And if you did that, then you'd also get 37,500 tier credits in 2024, which would give you a less status with Southwest, which doesn't have a ton of benefits. But we'll talk more about it a little bit later.

And it has some anyway. So know that you can also get status through spend with Southwest. All right. So now that you can also get status through Spend with Southwest. All right. So now we've covered two shortcuts. One, having credit cards. Second was credit card spend. Third one, shopping. So American Airlines is sort of unique

in making so many shopping avenues available for earning elite status. So they have their e-shopping portal. So if you click through their portal to, let's say you're shopping at Macy's.com and you see that American's offering 10 points per dollar at Macy's and you click through and buy something, you're going to earn both 10 American Airlines redeemable miles and 10 loyalty points for every dollar you spend at Macy's. So that's one example. Simply Miles, very, very similar to a shopping portal, but it's more like you've linked your credit card to it in the background. And then when you shop at

somewhere where Simply Miles has a deal going on that you've activated, you get the miles and loyalty points there. There's some cases where you have both. You can click through the portal, um, and link your, your, uh, card to simply miles and, and earn points both from their shopping portal and from simply miles. And then American airlines also has other things like, uh, American airlines, Airlines hotels and cars, where if you book a hotel or rental car through them, you earn miles and loyalty points. So you literally just from online shopping and booking things can earn top tier status. Yeah. Yeah. But yesterday I was shopping. I'm going to a wedding this weekend. I realized I

needed a new pair of shoes. And so I redeemed Capital One shopping cash back for a gift card and then went through the American Airlines portal in order to earn miles towards status while I was buying them. Now, I should mention, because we're bringing up the shopping portal, that a factor in my decision for using the portal yesterday was that there's also a bonus right now. If you spend $200, you get an extra thousand miles. And that's true as we're speaking. I think it ends the 15th or so. So only a couple of days left probably from the time this publishes. But I was spending about $200. So that was like an extra five miles per dollar for me. So I was factoring that into the return I was getting, my value for American Airlines miles. But that extra thousand, when they run a portal-wide bonus, like spend 200 at any store you want or multiple stores, and you get

an extra thousand miles, those are not loyalty points. Only the miles, like my purchase, let's say it was two miles per dollar. I can't remember what it was, but let's say it was two miles per dollar is what the store return showed. Those will be awarded as both redeemable and loyalty points, but the portal bonus will only be redeemable miles. So that's worth knowing. All right. So that's shopping as another shortcut. Now let's get into status matches. This is a really, really common way of jumping the line towards elite status. The trick is that you usually have to have status in another airline program, and then you can match to another one. And the way most of them work is you get about three months of match status,

and then you get to keep that status longer, like a year or, or so, uh, depending on the, the terms. Um, if you meet the, uh, the, the status match terms during those three months. So that means do you fly, did you fly that airline enough to, uh, meet the challenge and then extend your status longer? So, um, that's a really common way. American Airlines, though, does their status matches these days differently, don't they? Didn't you do one of these? Yeah. If they offer one anyway, then they do it a little bit differently. They don't

always have a public offer out. I think they do right now for members of, I think, just Delta elite members, if I remember correctly, but I could be wrong on that. I looked at it recently and I can't remember. But I signed up through a Hyatt fast track. And often that's what they'll do. They'll do something of targeted promotion with Hyatt members or targeted for certain members of the program where you can sign up and do a status match challenge. And their challenges are somewhat similar in that you get complimentary status for a certain period of time. And so what it was with the most recent time they did this with Hyatt was they let Hyatt elite members, Explorist and above, match over to a level of

American Airlines status for three months. And so Explorist got platinum status, globalists got platinum pro. And so then in that three month period, or was it four months period? Four months. It was four months is what it was. And during that four month period, you had to earn a certain number of loyalty points in order to keep the status. So you had four months of enjoying the status. And during that time, if you wanted to maintain platinum status, you needed to earn 25,000 loyalty points. And that's typically what they require. 42,000 loyalty points for Platinum you earn 67,000 loyalty points in that four months,

then you would end up with executive platinum status. And then they continue it rather than getting that status for a year. After that four months, if you meet that threshold, then you get status for another four months. And during that four months, you have to once again meet those requirements. So for instance, I signed up on October 1st. So I have complimentary status through February 1st. I need 42,000 loyalty points by February 1st to keep platinum pro status until June 1st. So I'd get it for four more months. And then I'd have to get 42,000 loyalty points during that window to keep the status again. So kind of weird. Yeah, that sounds awful to me. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. It is.

It is. It's not a good way to do it at all. It's not it's not competitive with what other people do for status matches. Right, right. In many of these cases, though, it's worth thinking about, like, do you just have like a few times you're going to be flying this other airline in the in the upcoming future? And so maybe a status match is worth doing just have elite status during those trips even if you're not going to complete the challenge that

that's one way of thinking about it it can be and one thing i like i should go on record saying one thing i like about americans status match even though i said it's not competitive the nice thing is that like with most other airlines the requirement is going to be flying a certain amount or spending a certain amount within that window with the airline. And you're not going to with American, you're going to earn all these loyalty or all these redeemable miles, I should say, that you can then use for a really valuable redemption anytime you want down the road. And you're not going to earn as many redeemable miles with the other requirements. So of course the requirements are lower, so maybe that doesn't matter as much, but United's, for instance, you're going to spend a lot of money on United flights in the three month period in order to requalify. Whereas I don't have to spend money on American Airlines flights. I just need to find ways to spend money. And if I can get most of it back, then. Right. Right. So that's a good point. All those like shopping trips we were talking about earlier will work to meet the challenge, right? Exactly. qualifying miles in order to meet the challenge. That said, Delta is out with a really competitive

status match right now, where if you have high level status with, or even mid-level status with another full service airline, they don't list things like Frontier Spirit on their list of qualifying airlines. But if you have it with a full service airline, you can match and get three months of Delta Elite status. And if you meet the status requirements, you keep status for all the rest of this year and all the rest of 2025 and through January of 2026. So you could get, like if you signed up early in 2024, you could theoretically get two years of elite status through this match. And the other thing that's unusual is that credit card spend to earn qualifying dollars

will count to meet the challenge. So they made it fairly easy-ish to complete the challenge as long as you have a Delta Reserve card, which is the one you'd want to do that. Mm-hmm. All right. United has a more typical um status match right where so the way a lot of them work is if you um you usually want to either start or complete your

status match uh july 1st or later because because then when you complete it, you keep status for the rest of that year and all the next year. Whereas if you complete it before July, your status is only good for the rest of the current year. And I think that's how United is doing it, but it's based on when you complete the challenge, not when you start it. Yeah. And that's important. That's a good distinction that I wasn't sure about when I read it. It sounded to me like that was true. And then a reader confirmed. So if you started a match with United in, say, March to get elite status

in April, no, that's not going to work. If you started it in April, I guess. Yeah, there we go. If it's because I think it's a three month challenge, then you could start meeting it. And then as long as you wait to complete meeting

the challenge requirements until after July 1st, you'll end up with those benefits for the rest of this year and all of next year. So that's much better than doing a match today and meeting the challenge, you know, sometime soon and only having status for 2024. You'll end up with, you know, almost 18 months of status, depending on how early, how soon after July 1st you're able to complete the challenge. And really, it makes sense because then you'll get the benefits for April, May, and June of this year. Right. So you get most of this year.

Right. So you really get more like 21-ish months of status, right? Yeah. I'm wondering if United's going to look at what Delta's doing and say, yeah, we should do it that way. Because it's kind of ridiculous to, you know, if someone like starts their challenge too early or even a few days to or finishes it, completes it too quickly. It's kind of ridiculous to encourage people not to one or to encourage them not to choose United. Right. Because if you're like almost at status and then suddenly you have to book the match uh july 1st or later in order to keep your status through 2025 if you want to uh have it last that long um turkish do you want to talk about turkish at all yeah turkish has a match i think it's really

interesting yeah so i discovered this just accidentally I was looking at statusmatcher.com. I was looking for ways to see if I could find Star Alliance gold status. And I just happened to notice data points on status matcher of people matching to Turkish. And then I found an article about it. And I think they brought the match out specifically to target people in Australia because they are starting to fly to Melbourne, which is also good news, by the way, because they have a great sweet spot from Europe to Australia. It's 50,000 miles, 52,000 miles one way in business class.

So it's not a particularly good sweet spot from the United States. But if you're looking to piece together a bigger award trip, that's a pretty good competitive rate to get to Australia from Europe. So anyway, more importantly, and also it'll be helpful for those

that are using Aeroplan for complex awards to finally have a route to Australia on Turkish. So lots of good news there. Anyway, I think they were targeting probably Qantas frequent flyers with this. But what they're doing is they're matching and there's not a written set of what matches to what. want to look at statusmatcher.com and see what status you have and if anybody has reported any data points as to where that's going to match with Turkish. But what you want is their elite status. Their top two tiers are elite and elite plus. And I don't think they're matching anybody to elite plus, but elite is Star Alliance gold. So that's the one you're aiming for. That's your target match. In order to do the match, like many things with Turkish, you have to fill out the feedback form on their website, which I've mentioned before. I feel like it seems like filling out a feedback form would just send your email into a garbage bin somewhere where nobody would ever see it. But that's not the case with Turkish. They actually read those and respond to them.

So you have to hit feedback, which is at the bottom of the website. It's kind of hidden away. I think you need to expand some other menu to even find it. And then when you hit feedback, which is at the bottom of the website. It's kind of hidden away. I think you need to expand some other menu to even find it. And then when you hit feedback, you'll pick membership processes. And then in there, you'll request your match and submit your proof. So I have a little bit of information in my post about my elite status plans this year, because I think you need a picture of your passport and a picture of your recent activity with the other airline. But what makes this match interesting is that you get a complimentary status for four months. And then in that four months, if you take one flight with Turkish, you'll keep your status for 12 months, for a year. So you just need to start this at some point when you've got a Turkish flight coming up within the

next four months. And there's no requirement as to that being a long haul. That could be a Europe to Europe sort of a trip. One flight with Turkish will give you a year. But if you pick up 15,000 miles flying Turkish, so you earn 15,000 on Turkish metal, then you'll keep the status for two years. So that's interesting because depending on where you are in the United States, a round trip to Istanbul, one round trip to Istanbul could be most of that, if not all of it. I mean, if you're out on the West Coast, I imagine that might be a 15,000 round trip, because from New York to Istanbul, a round trip is 10,000 miles. So just a single round trip to Istanbul. And then if I mixed in a couple of flights within Europe from there, a round trip from Istanbul to somewhere far enough away in Europe, I could

probably put the 15,000 together with a single trip if I wanted to and end up with Star Alliance gold status for two years. So I think that one's kind of interesting. It is. It is. And it's worth mentioning that if you earn Star Alliance gold status with United Airlines, that does not help you get into United clubs when traveling domestically in the United States. Whereas if you are in Star Alliance gold status with a foreign carrier like Turkish, then when you're flying United domestically, you'll be able to get into the United clubs. So that's a nice reason, even if you're mostly a domestic flyer, to at least look at this. Yeah, I find that very interesting, especially now that Turkish has flights out of Detroit. And keep in mind that an award ticket probably isn't going to count for the 15,000 miles that you have to earn in order to keep it for two years.

But if you use your Chase points at one and a half cents per point to book a cash fare, or your Amex points if you get the business platinum with a 35 percent rebate, then whatever you're earning flying on that flight is going to count towards those requirements. And so you can still theoretically anyway use points for that. I mean, that could end up being worth a mattress run. I don't know. I mean, I'm a mattress on a mileage run. I think it's kind of an interesting one for two years of Star Alliance Gold.

I don't have a United credit card, so that would get me a free checked bag on United and it would get me the priority check in, which, you know, if you're flying from a big airport and you're checking a bag, then that can be useful. So my family tends to check a bag. And so I'm just imagining checking in at the airport a couple of days from now on our way back home and having to stand in the regular line because I don't have access to the priority line. I'd love to have Star Alliance Gold for that. But anyway.

Yeah. You know, several years ago, we did the 40K to far away challenge and I flew. I flew United and Etihad, not Etihad, and Ethiopian. And I had matched to Star Alliance Gold, not with Turkish, but before that flight, I had matched to Star Alliance Gold. And so it was actually super helpful to fly because I was flying economy on all these flights. It was super helpful in some places. In some cases, there were huge, huge lines and I was able to just, nope, I'm going to go on that priority line. And to get into the lounges along the way was great. So there are circumstances where it can be really, really valuable. And that was one for me.

Right. Something that came to mind that is not related to the Turkish thing, but backs us up several steps to when you mentioned the Delta status match. And you said if you have status with one of the other major U.S. airlines, then they would match that. They're not going to match like Spirit or Frontier or whatever. They don't list it. They don't list it. Exactly. And the way you said it was was like that. Exactly. Which is worth, I think, mentioning that a couple of years ago I did match from Spirit Gold to Delta Gold.

They said no, but I wrote back and I was like, pretty please. And they were like, okay, fine, you can have Delta Gold. So, so, so. Any tips on how to phrase the pretty please? Well, I mean, I said, yeah, I mean, I said pretty please in slightly different terms, but I said that and I said, you know, I, I do have some trips coming up where Delta would be an option. And if I had status, then I would potentially choose Delta for those trips. And I did legitimately have a few trips where I could have chosen Delta. I didn't, but I could have chosen Delta for those trips. So anyway, that was how you might get that. United also very explicitly says on their match, they have a page that lists what they

match. So if you have Delta or American Airlines or whatever, you can see where it's going to match with United. But it explicitly says above the chart that it's not an exhaustive list, basically, that they may match other things too. So if you do have status with one of those smaller carriers, you can give it a shot. Don't be surprised if you hear a no, but also, again, don't be afraid to push back. If I ask again, what was the worst that was going to happen by saying, pretty please, you know, like, what are they going to say? No, again, that's the worst thing.

And maybe they'll say yes. And sure enough, they did. So yeah, yeah. So worth worth trying. All right. One last one to talk about here. Southwest Airlines offers a status match to their A-list status. And that matches a very similar. They'll match the other US-based airlines. I don't know that they'll match a foreign carrier, but they may because it's a matter of emailing in this case. So it's not... Whereas United status match, you have to log into your account and you have to click stuff out of a dropdown, I think, in order to do it. This is one that you submit via email. So you could try just about any status you have if you want to give it a shot.

The A-list status lasts for three months. You get complimentary status for three months. And then within that three months, you need to fly three round trips or six one-ways. So same difference either way. Three round trips, six one-ways with Southwest in order to keep that status for the rest of the year. Now, I don't know how a July 1st kind of a situation comes into play here. I haven't ever tried that with Southwest. So I'm not sure if there's a time of year when it's more advantageous to do that.

A-list status itself is like, and it doesn't come with great benefits. The key benefit, I think, is free same-day changes and same-day standby. Now, you can get that already by booking want-to-get-away plus fares. So you have the opportunity to get that without status. So it's not a huge bump to get a list status. I mean, you'll earn some more points and you'll get the priority check in line at the airport. So there are a couple of other benefits of a list status. They're just not quite as good as everybody else's. I don't think they already have free check bags for everyone, that sort of stuff. But, you know, if you want that waived same-day change or

same-day standby, I actually looked at this and said it might make sense for my player to, because we mostly book award flights. We've got a lot of Southwest points. We mostly book award flights. And I've been booking one to get away plus so that we have the option of a free same-day change if we want. Sometimes I've done that strategically when there's a same-day flight that I would prefer to have. And I'll book the one to get away plus because it's cheaper on a different flight and then try and same day change to the one I actually want. But with points like I'm paying extra points for that.

Right. So it's a situation where I could be booking the one to get away fares instead of the one to get away plus and save myself a couple thousand points each time we do this. If it were cash, it's a little bit different because I wouldn't want to book the want to get away fares. I would want to book the want to get away plus with cash because then when you cancel, you get a credit that's transferable to anyone. Whereas if you cancel a want to get away fare, that credit is tied just to the person that was on the reservation. You can't transfer that. So if I was using cash, I would want to book, want to get away plus anyway. So I would already have same day changes for free.

But if you primarily travel on awards like I do, then a list status becomes at least, you know, somewhat interesting because you'll save a couple thousand points each time. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's all our status matches. And another category of shortcuts is buying status. Now, every now and then different airlines come up with some promotions where you can essentially buy elite status from them. One that I wanted to discuss here, because a lot of times it's just not going to be worth it. But what I want to discuss here, because a lot of times it's just not going to be worth it. But what I

wanted to discuss here is Frontier. Each year for the last several years, I think it's towards the end of the year, they've been offering a, they call it a status match that you have to pay for, but it's really buying status. So what it is, is you could have status in almost anything and they'll match you. So you could have, for example, Hilton or IHG or Marriott gold status, which all of those you could get from just having like any of a whole slew of credit cards will offer those to you. So most listeners probably have that or could either easily get an airline or hotel elite status that Frontier would match to. And the way it worked most recently, I'm going to just look at platinum status because we discussed platinum status early in the show. That's what Steven Pepper wants in order to get waived pet carry-on fees.

And it also waives a lot of other fees, including check bag. You have to pay $99 to get this status match and you get platinum status. This was the most recent promotion they did. And you get a year of status and you're all good. And then one of our readers pointed out that they've been doing this year after year. Because if you look at the terms, it says if you've done one of these status matches recently within a certain amount of time, it's going to cost you $50 more to do the status match now. So you could for $149, assuming they bring this back every year and assuming the price stays about the same, it's about $149 per year to keep platinum status less than the first year, but then onward $149. And you're waiving so many fees that if you fly Frontier a good amount, it's going to weigh more than cover the fees, especially if you're flying with family. I mean, it's a no-brainer, I think.

Yeah, well, and it's going to be way less than the opportunity cost of putting $50,000 spend on a Frontier MasterCard or whatever it might be, right? So you're much better spreading your $50,000 spent over something else or even if you want to put it all on one card, then we could give you a laundry list of single cards

that would be better to spend your $50,000 on and just pay the $150,000 for this. Or a 2% back card and get $1,000 cash back. Right. And, you know,

then you're not going to be worried so much about paying $99 or $149 for the $99 or $149 and take the other $850 and go on vacation. So yeah, exactly. So if you want frontier status, you can buy it. Now, are you going to be able to use that purchase frontier status to match to something else, Greg? Well, if you ask Delta very nicely, we heard that you might be able to. So I think that's really worth considering is that usually when airlines list their status match options, they're not going to list Frontier, but it's absolutely worth doing what Nick did and

giving it a try and see. So it might just work out. Yeah, and I think Southwest, I bet probably they would. So if you're looking for the Southwest match, I would bet that might be a way to get it. If you don't currently have elite status with anybody else, that might be a gamble that's worth the $99 investment. And again, if they bring it back and if it's still $99, we don't know

exactly what it's going to cost. And for anybody who's like, wait, why did Nick have Spirit Gold status? I should probably mention that when they launched the new program several years ago, Spirit gave us complimentary gold status. And so that was why I had gold status at the time. I hadn't actually earned my gold status that I matched to Delta. And I only ended up with the status match for the challenge period. Well, I guess I got it after the challenge period, but that was like years ago now. So I haven't had either status while spirit gold status is gone. And my Delta gold status was 2021, 2022 is a while back anyway. So I don't know whether that'll still work today, but it's worth a shot.

So all right, you could buy status from Frontier. Are there any other ways that you might be able to get status? Yeah. I mean, frequently airlines have promotions like, I think it was last year, maybe two years ago, Singapore Airlines said if you transfer this many hundreds of thousands of points from, let's say, a bank program to Singapore Airlines. You'll get silver or gold status depending on how much you transfer. We've seen different things like different promotions like that just sort of randomly pop up along the time.

Hotel status can sometimes translate to airline elite status. We talked about how frontier hotel elite status can be used to airline elite status. We talked about how frontier hotel elite status can be used to launch that status match, status purchase option. But one common one, if you have Marriott titanium elite status, you can automatically get United silver status. So I've had United silver status for quite a few years now,

thanks to getting Marriott Titanium status year after year. And Hyatt, Nick mentioned earlier that if you have Hyatt Elite status, it can be sort of a gateway drug to getting American Airlines status challenge. There was a brief period where they were actually giving away status to some high level I had elites, but we haven't seen that return, unfortunately. Unfortunately, no. Yeah. And we should mention that it's always worth checking if you're not sure it's worth checking like statusmatcher.com. I go there now and then and just look and see because sometimes airlines that you might not have thought of may be offering a match or some people may have gotten a match because a lot of the foreign airlines don't offer websites dedicated to a match the way that American or U.S.-based airlines frequently do. Sometimes you just have to email customer service.

But I just even as we're recording this right now, just took a look and I saw Singapore. Oh, there's some people in December that reported matching from Qatar. I should have let you say it so that you'd get corrected. Privileged Club and Korean Skypass in November. And so, you know, maybe if you have status with somebody, you could try with Singapore. And that's one that, yes, right now they have the promotion with Marriott, but maybe you wouldn't have thought of that you have an airline status and possibly that could match over. And so, so it's worth checking those periodically. If you do have status with one airline and you want it with another one for some of those benefits that we've talked about, it's worth checking it out because sometimes you can get one. And every now and then we hear a report of somebody who ends up with status with one of these foreign programs

that they keep for like longer than they expected to. So I don't think there's like a known trick, or at least if there is, I don't know what it is in terms of which one will give you status for the longest. But keep those foreign programs in mind, because sometimes the Star Alliance or One World Benefits may be worth it to have status with a foreign airline. Greg mentioned club lounge access within the United States when you're flying domestically, which is obviously the biggie for a lot of people in chasing a foreign airline elite status program because you won't get access with American Airlines elite status or United Elite status to their respective clubs. But if you have status with one of their partners, you can. So it's worth checking

out all those other airlines that you may not have considered for a status match. Yeah. You know what? I forgot one interesting one airline situation that I should have mentioned earlier in the program, which is Air France Flying Blue. They base lead status on earning experience points and they have ways of earning experience points from doing things like donating to certain charities. Or when you're buying a ticket from them, you can contribute to certain environmental causes and earn XPps that way so uh that's worth looking into too if

you're interested in um in flying blue elite status which uh unfortunately uh i don't know that gives you that gives you um not star alliance uh status or one World status, both of which are pretty useful, but rather SkyTeam status, which has limited benefits compared to the others. Limited benefits, although I have found SkyTeam status not totally useless for intra-European flights, because if you're flying within Europe on the cheapest fares these days, usually they don't include checked bags. And SkyTeam Elite or Elite Plus or whatever it is you get with various levels there does give you a checked bag for free. So that I did find useful

at some point anyway in Europe. So if you're somebody who travels to Europe a lot, that could be worthwhile if you're traveling within Europe anyway in economy. All right. I think that brings us

to this week's question of the week. Is that right? That wraps up our status matching. So this week's question of the week, if Greg, you saw what I put in the outline, then ignore it because it was just to remind me what the question was. So this week's question of the week is a general one that is going to lead into a little bit of story time from a few listeners. So is it safe to complete spend for your stuff on December 31st, Greg? Would you do spend, whether it's for airline incidental credits or MQD waivers or whatever else, is December 31st an okay day to do it? Would you expect that to work out in your favor? Oh, um, it should be okay, but I, I, I, I don't trust

it. Um, so, so, so the idea is as long as the, uh, as long as the, the transaction gets recorded on your credit card or 1231, you should be okay. Whether it's like earning the last few dollars, spending the last few dollars in order to earn qualifying dollars towards elite status or spending towards some sort of rebate. It should work, but sometimes things happen where a transaction doesn't post till the next day. And you may be able to argue the cause and get that corrected, but I wouldn't want to be in that position. So I always try to do things well in advance. Sometimes I forget and do things last minute.

And so far, it's mostly worked out for me. Yeah, I mean, I got burned in a couple of small things. So like the business gold monthly credits at office supply stores, I made a couple of purchases on December 31st that didn't end up with a December 31st day on my statement. They ended up with a January day on my statement. Yeah. So I got burned on those. T-Mobile, I always do on the last day of the month and typically just before midnight. And those work out for me for the $10 credits on my various business platinum cards. So the monthly wireless credit, I've had very good luck with that at the end, at the last

minute. And I don't recommend it for all the reasons that Greg said, but those tend to work out for me. Airline fee credits in general, I did several this year, quite a few on December 31st. And they all posted correctly on December 31st. But I mentioned on a previous episode that a year or two ago, I did a United one very close to midnight. I bought a travel bank credit or a club pass. That's what it was. It was a club lounge pass just before midnight. And somehow that charge must not have gotten finalized until after midnight. And so the transaction date on my

statement ended up as January 1st. And so I missed out on the chance to trigger an airline incidental credit because I waited until the very last minute there. So that's a potential risk. So I brought this up for two reasons. We had a reader who wrote in and they were doing the rest of the spend for an MQD waiver with Delta on December 31st. And they bought a Delta ticket on December 31st, but the transaction data ended ticket on December 31st. But the transaction data ended up showing January 1st. And so they did not end up with their MQD waiver. And of course, when you end up in that kind of a situation, you're like, who do you call? Because if you call Delta, they're going to say, well, it's on Amex to report to us that you met the MQD waiver.

And then you call Amex, and they're going to say, oh, well, it's on Delta decide whether or not you get the MQD waiver. So you end up in this endless frustrating loop, right? Where you're like, oh man. Yeah. Yeah. That's really sad. I actually had something similar that happened many years ago, and it was with Amex and Delta. And Amex was able to correct it for me. It was actually my fault. I actually had made a mistake. I hadn't spent enough, but I was really, really close. And I called Amex. At first, they were like, I can't help you,

but I talked to a supervisor, and she said, well, I'll put in a ticket or whatever to get this investigated to see if we could do anything for you. And they actually did it. I have no idea if that could work today, but it worked. But it's worth it. Well, that's good news for the reader who wrote in with that.

The other one that came up via reader, and I wanted to mention both of these because we just started the new year. And so I know these are kind of too late to play Monday morning quarterback on what happened at the end of last year because you can't change that. But I feel like it could be helpful

for people planning for the next year. And by December, I'll forget these data points. So I wanted to mention this other one too, because a reader wrote in who had a Southwest card and they were going after a companion pass. And so they said that they had only spent, they needed to spend $5,000 in order to earn their welcome bonus and only spent $3,700. But on their December statement on December 28th, they had earned the welcome bonus. And so when they dug into it, what we found happened was they had spent over $5,000, but then canceled a booking. And so they had an Airbnb booking that was refundable. And so they had spent, let's just keep the number simple and say they spent $6,000 on an Airbnb booking and then canceled it. And so they got the $6,000 refund and then spent $3,700. That's not exactly the numbers. It's not exactly how it worked out, but essentially that's the idea, right? And so they thought the initial purchase wouldn't count because they canceled it, but it did. Exactly. It did. And so they ended up with the welcome bonus like

three days before the end of the year. And so Chase told them that when their January statement closes, that'll get clawed back because they'll have not met the spending requirements anymore. And then when they meet the spending requirements again, it'll get reposted to their Southwest account and they will earn the points in 2024 for the companion pass. I'm highly skeptical that it will work out that way. I don't think for a minute that it's going to happen that way. But it's a good cautionary thing, because a lot of people, especially for the companion pass, that's one that frequently comes up where people say, well, you know, safe to spend after your December

statement cuts. And that's probably true, because then you're not going to get the points probably until your January statement posts. But you got to be really careful when it comes to the spending requirements, because I totally see what happened in this case. Chase, the computer system said, oh, met spending requirements, post the welcome bonus. And even though you return something later on, the computer had already triggered that welcome bonus. And so you got to be extra careful when you're doing those things at the end of the year. That's's an easy mistake to make i would have made the same mistake if i didn't like all right live all right the the chase will fix that one automatically hogwash or cat grooming man i you know for the listeners benefit i i don't really think i think Nick's about to sneeze no no I felt my nose like growing like

Pinocchio over here because uh I mean that seems like hogwash that's like uh man I can't believe that that'll happen I hope it does I hope it does yeah yeah but maybe it might it might it might I mean you you mentioned that Amex was able to fix something for you. So there's always that hope. But you end up in the same situation there where, like, you know, I totally could see the frustration because you were counting on that welcome bonus to get the companion pass. But I also see the difficulty in trying to get anybody at the bank or Southwest to understand that, well, I still want those points. I just don't want them on that day. I want them on this other day. And so, you know so it's a tough thing to try to even get fixed. So even

if they wanted to fix it, they're like, oh, but you ultimately met the spending in January. So you got the points. You're all good, right? So hard for somebody to even understand probably. Well, let me say this about it. I think the chance of Chase correcting it automatically for them is better than the chance of a cat getting wet if you hold them over a bathtub and let go. That is absolutely true. And, you know, your point about following up with Amex customer service is a good one because I frequently say you hit 0% of the balls you don't swing at. So you got to take a swing and try. So that's certainly a good reminder that even if I think something is unlikely, it's still worth calling or sending a message and following up. And then

if that doesn't work, then look up the, you know, whatever the corporate contacts are with Chase or with Southwest to follow up with somebody and say, hey, listen, I shouldn't have gotten this. And this is why it is worth trying that and making your way up the food chain, so to speak, to get it fixed. Because on a show just a couple of months ago, I talked about how Capital One was able to extend the spending requirement time for a friend of mine who just like they missed the spending window, essentially. They thought they had it, but they missed it. And Capital One extended it for them. They gave them an extra couple of weeks, which I thought would have been impossible. But again, if you don't ask, if you don't bark up the tree,

then it's definitely not going to happen. So it's always worth barking up the tree. But when it comes to end of the year stuff, it gets very, very tricky. You've got to really plan things out when you get towards the end of the year in terms of when you're going to use your credits, when you're going to do your spend. And certainly when you're working on a Chase welcome bonus, you want to make sure that you

do not cross the spending threshold. That was the takeaway from that story to me, sooner than your December cut, your statement cuts. You want to wait until after your statement cuts to cross the spending threshold, including all purchases, whether you've returned or canceled some or not. All right. Tips about timeliness at a very untimely time. Right, right, right. I mean, it's too late, but it's also a good time to remember that. So you plan, hopefully, if you remember this, you'll plan out your plan of attack for 2024 and learn from those things that we've all made those types of mistakes. So, all right, that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode, you want to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to

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