Air Astana, the Kazakhstan airline, has published an offer to match existing British Midland Diamond Club status with elite status in their Nomad Club program.

A large number of airlines offer status match programs, but they rarely publish them. They exist as unpublished procedures for how to respond when an elite (and presumably lucrative) customer of another airline offers to switch to a new carrier… but doesn’t want to lose their perks as a result of the switch.

Status matches are very rare outside of the United States. The only program that’s part of a major alliance with a regular match program that I can think of is British Midland (and it’s a great little program, especially for premium class customers who earn boatloads of miles and then can redeem them with a generous cash and points award chart for Star Alliance flights). Mexicana also has (or at least used to have, I haven’t verified this recently) a match program. Other international airlines offer matches on occasion, such as the famous KLM offer to match not just status but miles in a competitor account. But that was a one-off about 5 years ago.

Beyond that very few international programs offer status matches, and ever fewer publish them. So here’s scrappy Air Astana making a play for British Midland elites. This won’t do much for you if you don’t fly Air Astana. But I’m tempted to ask for the status match just for the personalised luggage tags.

What’s more, an Air Astana status match now will last through February 2010.