Learn the best strategies to get airline frequent flyer status easily and fast to enjoy tons of benefits you don’t want to miss!

 

After my earlier post about getting elite status fast at luxurious hotels, I feel compelled to also share with you about attaining airline frequent flyer status fast.

I’m sure you all have watched the movie, Up In The Air, with the famous George Clooney. You know the secret why he’s always able to travel in style? Yep, frequent flyer status!

Having frequent flyer status at airlines can be extremely advantageous. On top of exclusive benefits that go along with it, the status can be very useful as a strategy to fly cheaply through redeeming airline miles.

In this post, I would like to reveal to you the best strategies to get frequent flyer status FAST.

Compared to the hotel’s loyalty program, the landscape for airline’s loyalty program is a bit more complicated. However, as always, I will try to break down the strategies as SIMPLE as possible for you. So without further ado, here is how you can get airline frequent flyer status FAST.

 

How to get airline frequent flyer status fast

 

What is a frequent flyer status?

For those of you unfamiliar with frequent flyer status or elite status, let me take a step back a little bit to explain to you what it is all about, and why you would want one.

Every major airline carriers such as United, Delta, or American Airlines have a loyalty program in place that is designed to encourage you as a customer to frequently fly with them. As a reward for your loyalty, these airlines will give you frequent flyer status, and offer you tons of benefits according to your attained status.

There are different tiers of frequent flyer status within a loyalty program, and each airline obviously has its own tier system and naming – as an example, both United and Lufthansa choose to have a 4-tier system for their respective loyalty programs (United’s loyalty program is called MileagePlus, and Lufthansa’s is called Miles & More). However, United calls their highest status as Premier 1K, while Lufthansa calls it HON Circle.

Different tier status comes obviously with different benefits. The higher frequent flyer status you have, the more benefits you will get. And the more frequent you fly, the higher your frequent flyer status will be.

 

So, why would you want a frequent flyer status?

As I touched upon briefly, in addition to nice benefits like lounge access, priority boarding, and extra baggage allowance, having a frequent flyer status can be a very useful strategy to help you fly cheaply by racking up miles quickly and cheaply.

By attaining a higher frequent flyer status at an airline loyalty program, you become eligible to earn more miles than what you would normally get from flying. How? This is through a mechanism, which I call the “multiplier effect”.

For example, if you fly one way between New York JFK and Paris CDG and you book a normal economy class ticket that earns you 100% of the flown miles, you will rack up a mere 3,600 miles (which is basically the distance flown between New York and Paris).

But because you have a frequent flyer status, you will receive bonus miles ON TOP of the flown miles. So, instead of only earning 100% of the flown miles, you will be eligible to earn 125% to 150% of the flown miles depending on your frequent flyer status tier.

This “multiplier effect” will get even larger if you travel in business- or first class, through which you can even earn up to 300% of the flown miles depending on your frequent flyer status tier.

This is for sure an amazing way to quickly rack up tons of miles, which you can redeem later on for free tickets to destinations of your choice.

As you will learn later, obtaining a frequent flyer status is not that hard if you follow those strategies. Furthermore, signing up for airline loyalty program would cost you NOTHING, and you obviously don’t want to miss those precious miles that you can collect anyway every time you fly.

 

How to get the highest frequent flyer status quickly?

So, now it’s time to dig into the strategies that you can use to get the highest frequent flyer status quickly.

There are 3 strategies that I will outline further here: (1) Choosing the right airline loyalty program; (2) Status challenge/mileage runs; and (3) Status match.

#1 – Choosing the right airline loyalty program

 

When it comes to getting frequent flyer status easily, not all airline loyalty programs are created equal. Therefore, it is very important to first choose wisely the airline loyalty program that is right for you.

There are 3 criteria that you must consider to choose the right airline loyalty program for you:

1. Airline loyalty program with the lowest requirement needed to achieve the highest frequent flyer status
2. Airline loyalty program that offers possibilities to do status challenge/mileage run
3. Airlines with operations in the region where you are based

In addition to that, it is also useful for you to start getting familiar with airline alliances. When you achieve a frequent flyer status at one airline that is a member of a certain alliance, it means that you can enjoy your frequent flyer status at all other airline members in that alliance.

Having said all of that, here is a list of airline loyalty programs that I’d recommend for you to choose and sign up:

STAR ALLIANCE

• Asiana Club
• Aegean Airlines Miles & Bonus
• Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles
• Avianca LifeMiles

SKYTEAM

• Air France-KLM Flying Blue
• Korean Air Skypass
• Delta Airlines Skymiles

ONEWORLD

• British Airways Executive Club
• American Airlines AAdvantage

 

#2 – Status challenge/mileage runs

 

Similar to attaining hotel status, you can also attain frequent flyer status quickly and easily through a status challenge.

The status challenge allows you to get an instant frequent flyer status through completing a number of flights within a certain period of time.

This is a great way to obtain a frequent flyer status quickly, as the number of miles/flights required to complete the challenge is always lower than the normally required amount of miles/flights to achieve higher tier.

As an example, instead of requiring you to fly 75,000 miles in a year to get a Platinum status, with the challenge an airline may require you only to fly 25,000 miles within 3 months.

At the moment, unfortunately, only a few airlines are offering a status challenge to fast-track you to the highest frequent flyer status. One of them is American Airlines.

 

AMERICAN AIRLINES AADVANTAGE STATUS CHALLENGE

American Airlines is currently offering a status challenge through their loyalty program, AAdvantage.

To earn AAdvantage frequent flyer status, you need to hit the requirements for either Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) or Segments (EQS) and Elite Qualifying Dollar (EQD). With this challenge, you need to hit 7,000 EQM and $1,000 EQD within 3 months in order to get a Gold status. For Platinum status, you need to hit 12,500 EQM and $2,000 EQD within 3 months.

Unfortunately, you will need to pay $200 to participate in the challenge. And if you want your Gold status immediately, you can pay an additional $200 for a total of $400. If you want Platinum status immediately, it will cost an extra $300 for a total of $500.

To register for the challenge, you have to make a call to American Airlines Customer Service on +1-888-697-5636 (Skype also works).

Prior to registering for the challenge, make sure you already have an AAdvantage account. If you haven’t, you can sign up for free here.

 

If the hurdle of a status challenge sounds too steep for you, you can also do a personal mileage run. A mileage run is simply flying as a passenger on flights, only with a specific purpose of racking up enough miles to earn frequent flyer status.

I will try to cover more about mileage run in a future post, but the key to a mileage run is to find the cheapest ticket possible to earn the maximum amount of miles possible.

 

#3 – Status match

 

Another strategy to get an airline frequent flyer status fast is through a status match.

The concept of a status match is pretty straightforward. If you hold a frequent flyer status at one airline loyalty program, you can match it to get an equivalent (or maybe lower) frequent flyer status at other airlines as well.

A status match is awesome because it provides an opportunity for you to “arbitrage” between different airlines and/or airline alliances. This will also ensure that you will continually have a frequent flyer status at any airline/alliance without expiration.

Suppose you obtain a Gold status at airline A. But this status almost expires, and you will rarely fly with airline A in the near future. You can simply try to match your Gold status from airline A to airline B, and your frequent flyer status at airline B will commence when the status match is approved.

To check which airlines offer a status match, you can check it here. Here below are few opportunities of status match that are currently available.

 

TURKISH AIRLINES MILES & SMILES STATUS MATCH

Turkish Airlines offers instant status match very frequently from other airline loyalty programs.  However, it is not always clear for which loyalty programs they will offer an instant status match, and for which ones they will offer a status challenge.

The best way is to check it here. Please note that Turkish will likely not offer a status match for frequent flyer status attained from other Star Alliance airlines.

You can try to submit your request via this contact form. You have to provide proof of your competing frequent flyer status, passport and proof of activities within the past 12 months.

Once the match is approved, you can enjoy the status for 4 months, during which one international segment flown on Turkish Airlines is required to extend the match to a period of 1 year.

 

DELTA SKYMILES MEDALLION STATUS MATCH

Delta is currently offering a status match through their loyalty program, SkyMiles.

If your status match is approved, you can enjoy the complimentary matched status for 3 months. However, this period can be extended, if you are able to complete a small “challenge”.

To extend your matched status, you need to hit 18,750 Qualification Miles or 25 Segments during the 3-month complimentary period in order to keep your Platinum status longer. If you enroll in the challenge on or after July 1, 2018, and you complete this challenge, your status will be extended through January 2020!

You can submit your request and read more about this status match here. As always, make sure you already have a Delta SkyMiles account prior to registering for the status match. If you haven’t, you can sign up for free here.

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So, will you get your frequent flyer status any time soon?

Please let me know if this post is helpful for you, and do not hesitate to share your experience.

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Image Courtesy: Cathay Pacific and thegate.boardingarea.com