A Backdoor Way to Free Checked Bags with American Airlines: Instant Kingfisher King Club Silver Status

The free Hilton HHonors Gold status offer that I posted Friday evening required you to have a Visa Infinite card, and the way the website verifies this is by having you enter the first six digits of the credit card.

Which was a great opportunity to learn about Bank Identification Numbers on Wikipedia.

Of course, just knowing the first six digits of any Visa Infinite card from a qualifying region of the world worked to unlock the website and take advantage of the offer.

Apparently this is a popular way to verify that you have a credit card, since now Live from a Lounge brings us an offer of free Kingfisher elite status for Mastercard holders:

To register, you should have an eligible MasterCard (Platinum, World, Titanium Credit Cards or a Premium Debit Card), and you have to plonk the first 6 digits on the Kingfisher website here, to get your upgraded. Titanium and Platinum tiers get Kingfisher KingClub Red tier, but World MasterCard users get KingClub Silver.

Why would you want status with Kingfisher? The airline is set to join oneworld in about six weeks. So King Club silver should be the bottom tier (Ruby) elite status within oneworld. That’ll get you priority boarding and free checked bags with American, for instance.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. Thanks Gary for posting this
    I tried a few numbers and none of them worked. Can anyone suggest some numbers for me please
    And it looks like it will last only to the end of the year right?

  2. I tried my Platinum Level World Elite Mastercard and got ‘Invalid Member’ message. Curious if anyone got theirs to work. T+C indicate you dont need to be King Club member to do this promo (appears that it would take you to signup page)

  3. i tried a lot of numbers, and the website was not working for about 15 mins. My guess is they are issues with the website and nothing is working. I’ll try again tomorrow.

  4. “Invalid Member” message for me as well with my World Mastercard. T+C actually seem to say you should not already be a King Club member.

  5. So when i book aa, i tell them i have silver with kingfisher amd i get free checked baggage and priority boarding? Confused.

  6. I tried several numbers, the only one that worked was for and indian based platinum mastercard, and that just gives red. Someone needs to find the first 6 digits for a world mastercard issued by an indian bank.

  7. Aaaaamd the How to Rip Off Hilton post goes poif!

    Remorseful for wasting people’s time?

    Thought so.

  8. 552093

    Worked like a charm and now I have Silver Status on OneWorld and Gold Hilton. Talk about two awesome xmas surprises! Thanks Gary!

  9. 545207 also works for silver. Turn off your pop-up blockers. Seems to work better in IE than firefox. And don’t make your Kingfisher account beforehand.

  10. @yaychemistry – simply use your Kingfisher status and then get it changed post-checkin either at the gate or at a kiosk.

  11. Just signed myself and wife up using 549852, worked great. Won’t have to use my Amex money for bags now!

  12. 549852 worked for me too! btw it’s interesting that their page insists on a dropdown menu for selecting your city of residence – and if you don’t live in a major US city won’t find your town listed….not that I care whether I get snail mail from Kingfisher, lol!

    I did have trouble signing up in Chrome, fwiw. Firefox worked fine.

  13. I’m surprised this offer is only making the rounds now as it has been around almost a year (We posted to FrequentFlyerBonuses.com the first week of January 2011). It actually may be better to join now however as Gary states that Kingfisher is set to join OneWorld soon and had you joined earlier the Kingfisher status could have run out before them joining OneWorld. Thanks for bringing this offer back to light Gary!

  14. @Patrick S – indeed most of my readers wouldn’t have benefited from it before Kingfisher was on the verge of joining oneworld 🙂

  15. I accidentally signed up for a Kingfisher account before doing the Mastercard promotion, thought you had to have an existing account. Is there anyway to get it to work now?

  16. Got the Silver and 750 miles (250 sign up and 500 for the optional fields marked with the crown symbol). My city of residence was not on the dropdown menu, so I used the nearest major city. After completing the sign up, I went to my profile and it was there along with many other nearby cities that were not there before. If your city was not on the original list, you might want to check now or you may not receive your Silver card that you might need to get the free checked baggage or any other benefits.

  17. Yeah — Just wondering, how do you get free checked bags? The Ruby tier status does not mention free checked bags.

    Thanks!

  18. @Andy Thanks for the link, used it and worked! For some reason the account numbers that others posted for Silver didn’t work for me, I tried IE and Safari on multiple different devices as well. Your link did the job though, thanks again!

  19. OOC, since this should be oneworld Ruby (which corresponds to AA Gold), does it also grant the 25% bonus on elite miles? Or is that just for “real” AA Gold?

  20. @Charlene – I did the same thing, so what I did was I added my middle initial into the box to fill out my first name and it worked. The system only logs your name and birthday as identity checkers. If you sign up with a different name (Jason vs. Jason D), you’re considered a new member. and 549852 is what i used.

  21. How can you tell you have silver status. When I click on Daily Status review, it states King Base. For those who say you have silver status, does yours say king silver or king base?

  22. Agree with #39 @Sil, how do we know what our status is (e.g., red, silver)? When I look in my newly created account, there is no indication and none of the tabs leads to anything that tells you the answer.

  23. I didn’t get Silver so I emailed cst svc and asked to be upgraded from Red to Silver. Below is their response. I’m going to try again with an India address and see if it works.

    Thank you for writing to King Club – India’s most rewarding frequent flyer programme.

    With reference to your email, we wish to inform you that the said promotion was valid for only to the Guests residing in India. Therefore, we will not be able to upgrade your tier to Silver.

    In this context, we appreciate your sentiments, we truly regret our inability to comply with your request. In doing so, we assure you that no discourtesy is intended. Although it has been our constant endeavor to offer you the best services at King Club, we regret the disappointment we may have caused you.

    For further assistance, please contact us anytime on 91 860 266 9000 / 02027293030 (all India local number) / email us at kingclub@flykingfisher.com / FAX us on 91 20 6624 2254.

    We thank you for your patronage and look forward to welcoming you aboard Kingfisher Airlines.

  24. According to Kingfisher’s website (http://www.flykingfisher.com/media-center/press-releases/kingfisher-airlines’-oneworld-implementation-put-on-hold.aspx) Their association with oneworld has been put on hold while the airline “strengthens its financial position.” Kingfisher is also in trouble for not paying their payroll taxes (http://travel.usatoday.com/alliance/flights/boardingarea/post/2011/12/Lufthansa-Flyer—Kingfisher-Update-8212-Has-Not-Been-Paying-Payroll-Taxes/588887/1). So, I’m betting that they’ll not be joining oneworld any time soon and that this backdoor to Ruby status isn’t going to work out… Just sayin’.

  25. Just tried it, got Red status, not SIlver. Will wait a few days to see if it will update.

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