Turkish Airlines, as a member of the Star Alliance, has started to status match members of the BMI Diamond Club program on the announcement of BMI getting sold to IAG (British Airways) and hence breaking away from the Star Alliance.

However, as it is now turning out, Turkish is also status matching into other alliances. As of today the following status matching is being done:

• Silver on another carrier (BD/Another alliance) –> TK Miles and Smiles Classic Plus (*A Silver)
• Gold on another carrier (BD/Another alliance) –> TK Miles and Smiles Elite (*A Gold)
• No status match to the Miles and Smiles Elite Plus (TK’s top tier)

Status is good for 2 years from the date of status match.

Requalification: Members outside Turkey need the following for requalification:

• 25000 Status Miles in 1st year or 37500 Status Miles in 1st and 2nd year for Keeping the *A Gold, else soft landing to *A Silver (for 2 years)
• 17000 Status Miles in 1st Year or 37000 Status miles in 1st and 2nd year for keeping the *A Silver.

You can also buy upto 10,000 Status Miles in the second year if you don’t think you will fulfil the criteria.

*A Gold Benefits: Come on, all of you know this, but I will still tell you again:

• Airport Lounge Access – available worldwide for you and a friend when you travel with any Star Alliance member airline, regardless of your class of travel.
• Priority Airport Check-in – allows you to check-in at the Business and/or First Class counter.
• Priority Boarding – enjoy the freedom of boarding at your convenience along with First and Business Class passengers.
• Extra Baggage Allowance – an additional 20 kg (44 pounds) where the weight concept applies, or one additional piece of luggage where the piece concept applies.
• Priority Baggage Handling – like you, your bags get priority treatment and are among the first to be unloaded.
• Priority Reservations Waitlisting – when there aren’t any seats left on your preferred flight, gives you priority should a seat become available.
• Priority Airport Standby – gives you top priority when standing-by a flight at the airport.

Overall, it is an upcoming program with much success at the Freddies 2012 (Program of the Year – Europe) and so looks like a lot of potential ahead. Also, one of the easiest programs to retain *A Gold. The program is also decently generous in terms of earning miles by flying on *A carriers. You can have a look at the charts here.

Take note that Turkish Airlines did not use to status match as a policy at a point of time, but seems that is set to change.

Here is how to request for the status match:

• Sign up for a Turkish Airlines M&S Account here.
• Send an email to customermiles@thy.com with a scan of your other airline FFP membership card and account statement (this is a requirement to receive both). You will need to make a case for them to look at you as a good case to status match into their program (a business case for them?)
• You should hear from them in a week to ten days about their ‘decision’ on your status match query.

All the best, and ping back for questions if any!

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I’m assuming everyone of you readers reading this has some sort of online social identity via Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. Klout is a site which measures your social influence by looking at all sorts of factors such as number of followers, number of likes on your post and others.

They announced an interesting deal with Cathay Pacific yesterday, where a Klout score of 40 or upwards allows Klout users to access the recently-opened Cathay Pacific First and Business Class Lounge in San Francisco. Earlier than today, only F & J customers of the airline, and oneworld elites flying a oneworld-member airline could be the only ones who could access the lounge.

Under the terms of the deal, anyone who complies with the 40+ condition can access the lounge, even if they are not flying a OW member airline. So, you could be flying United Airlines domestic Air France out of SFO, and still get access to the lounge. Here is what the official announcement says:

This applies to any visitor traveling through the “A” boarding area at SFO’s international terminal, even if they aren’t a Cathay Pacific passenger.

The SFO lounge owned and operated by CX is one of the newer lounges in SFO, having only opened in December 2011. Loyalty Traveler was over at the inauguration and clicked some pictures.

I’m sure this should be a good opportunity for some of you in the vicinity to try out the CX lounge in the coming days.

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And Kingfisher Airlines as well, but that is not so important!

Buddies in crime for a while, Delta Airlines is terminating its frequent flyer partnership with Jet Airways from 15th October 2012 as per an announcement put out on the Delta Skymiles website.

While Jet and Delta both have had a reputation of their own as good airlines, both have had one big problem area where they could give each other a good fight, the worse redemption capabilities ever. This is where the parallels have been drawn all this while.

According to this thread on FT, Delta fired Jet Airways because Jet had even more restrictive rules than them on redeeming rewards. I am sure they could not take that someone contested their capabilities with SkyPeso redemption on this end

Nope, 9W is the worst airline for award redemption. Not only is it worse in terms of award ticket allotment, it also has one of the worst redemption system for partner airlines. So lets say if Delta wants to request a 9W segment, it has to prepare the complete itinerary (with confirmed availability of all other partner airlines segments) and then ‘submit’ the request to 9W system. 9W system comes back with ‘waiting list’ or ‘confirmed’ status in 1 min -2 hrs. This award availability is not in sync with what you see in JPMiles system. So there is no way for a partner to check D/X availability without submitting these blind requests.

Anyways, so now the frequent US travellers to India will not be able to redeem their miles for travel in India or on Jet Airways from the USA/elsewhere to India. Neither will they be able to earn miles for travel on Jet Airways after 15th October 2012.

Similarly, Indian travellers will not be able to utilise their Jet Privilege accounts to earn miles for travel on Delta going forward 15th October, however, Jet does not see this as important enough information, so they will not put this out on their website just yet!

But this isn’t just about Jet Airways, since their partnership with the mostly defunct Kingfisher Airlines is going to be over as well by 1st October 2012. Whether the airline goes down first or will it be this partnership is anyone’s guess.

So, for the frequent travellers to India from the US, there is no longer an option to credit their domestic travels in India on Delta any longer.

I guess this also brings to an end the discussion, which has been going on in the recent past, that with Air India leaning to Star and Kingfisher to oneworld, Jet Airways would head to SkyTeam.

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