How to Get Turkish Airlines to Match Your Elite Status (or “Free United and US Airways Lounge Access”)

by Gary Leff

Back in June I was given mid-tier elite status by Turkish Airlines, Gold in their Miles & Smiles program, as a result of my british midland Gold status.

The bmi program was winding down as a result of the airline being acquired by British Airways, and Turkish was making a play to acquire their customers.

What that meant to me is that I would continue to have lounge access with United and US Airways whenever flying either airline, even domestically. Because “Star Alliance Gold”-level frequent flyers with non-U.S. frequent flyer programs are entitled to that access. (Of course I already get US Airways lounge access from my American Express Platinum card. So for me this was about free United access.)

Here’s what’s interesting, though. It wasn’t just a limited-time offer to pick up British Midland’s customers. Turkish Airlines will offer status matches on an ongoing basis.

The status lasts two years and they give you two years to re-qualify (if you choose to).

Since I do not live in Turkey, the rules are 25,000 Status Miles in year one or 37,500 Status Miles in two years, and they will let you purchase 10,000 towards the 37,500 (either at 25 euros per thousand or 30 euros, the website separately lists both prices and I haven’t checked which one applies in practice). I did a bit more analysis in my original post on the status match.

What’s most interesting is who they will offer this to.

Reader Ron A., an American AAdvantage Platinum member, emailed a request which was denied. But the response he received outlined which members Turkish will offer the matches to:

Please be informed that only Star Alliance Gold , Skyteam Elite Plus and Oneworld Emerald members have an opportunity for Status Match.

They will match other Star Alliance Gold members. So a United or US Airways Gold (50,000 status miles) can get Turkish Gold, and thus free lounge access.

They will also match American Executive Platinums and also Delta Golds.

The idea here is they will offer their status which is equivalent to the top tier in the Star Alliance to anyone that has top tier in an alliance. Oneworld has three tiers, so only the very top will get matched by Turkish. Star Alliance and Skyteam have only two tiers, with top tier offered to 50,000 mile flyers at United and at Delta.

So, as Ron points out, “50,000 miles a year on Delta will get you
a match from Turkish but 50,000 on American won’t.”

To me it’s interesting that they will match United! Traditionally airlines haven’t been willing to ‘poach’ customers from within the same alliance.

If you want a status match from Turkish, registered for their Miles&Smiles program. Then send a request to customermiles@thy.com including a copy of your membership card and online statement showing your status.

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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Comments

  1. Is there a mileage requirement for this? I’m platinum on UA so do I need to fly xx miles on TK to get status match?

  3. Anyone had any success actually crediting flights to Turkish? I took a United flight 6 weeks ago that still hasn’t shown up. If it was easy, I’d just credit all my Star flights to TK to try and get the 37,500, but doing the whole “save my boarding pass and fax credit card receipts” won’t cut it.

  5. My wife did it successfully as a US Plat. Worked pretty easily. Took about a week for them to approve it and another month for the card to arrive, so it isn’t a super quick process, but it does work.

  6. So if you do this and you’re flying domestically, you could still have your US Airways FF# on your reservation, but so long as you have the Turkish *G card, that’s all that matters for lounge access?

  7. Is it two Calendar Years, or two years from the match date? Or should we wait until Jan 1st to sign up?

  8. Mine is through June ’14. The remaining question I have is whether one needs to actually credit a flight to Turkish Airlines in order to be sent the card itself. The website says that that is the case, but there are reports on FT from others who say they received their cards w/o such a flight credit.

  9. I did the status match months ago, but I was never sent a Turkish Gold card. Without the card, you can’t easily get into United lounges, although I believe some have obtained entry by bringing along a paper printout from the TK web site demonstrating your Turkish Gold status.

    There’s a thread on Flyertalk about this and the general consensus seems to be that you have to have to credit at least one flight segment to TK in order to get the card.

    But whatever you do, don’t call TK customer service, because their hold music loops every 7 seconds and will drive you insane (“We, are, Turkish Airlines. We, are, globally yours.”) And no lounge is worth that. Well maybe the Istanbul TK lounge, which is the most glorious lounge I’ve ever seen.

  12. So what is the consensus ? Get it now or wait until January to get the maximum time ?

  13. i applied for a match 2 months ago and my status expires 2 years from my signup.

    signup for an account first so they have an account to match. i got my gold card a few weeks later – no flight credited.

  14. That website is a total pain. Kept wanting me to live in Turkey, and then it gave me an error saying a duplicate account exists (probably happened after hitting enter, but getting those errors).

    Try again tomorrow.

  15. Great post. I am surprised people didn’t complain about you letting “the cat out of the bag.”

  16. Your timing couldn’t be better Gary. I just cancelled my UA Presidential Platinum Card and my RCC membership will run out the end of November. Wish me luck

  17. What’s the advantage to have a TK *G card for those folks who have already got status matched to A3 *G till 12/31/2015 (or infinity)?

  20. Can I get into TK lounges if I am not flying TK (or other Star Alliance airline) if I do this? I understand I can enter TK lounges when I am flying another Star Alliance airline (of course when flying TK). Am I getting this right?

  21. At least one people I know have been denied access because they don’t have their TK number in their reservation.

    I have accessed the UC dozens of times with no problem when crediting to UA. I’m not sure if its because i have a UC membership as well. Only a few people mentioned my UC membership but most have handed me the wifi cards they only give to guests.

  22. I can’t enroll the account,same problem with Thomas. It said I have a duplicate account exists. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks

  23. I matched as UA Gold, took a while.

    Their site has some US cities on a list, but if you don’t live in the top 100 or so, then that’s a small problem.

    I livein rural PA and the nearest listed city was Philly. I put that in, got the notice of the match, then sent a note to them to correct the address. The card showed up about a month later and I’ve used it to enter a UA club.

    I’ve since cancelled my PresidentsPlus card and opened a Mileage plus card (to get a checked bag free.)

    I’ll lose UA Gold at the end of the year. My last flight (over Labor day weekend) I booked via UA FF number and got upgrades. Had they not cleared I would have asked the lounge desk to change FF to TK.

    I’ll have another 2 or 3 flights (RT, so double that) and will have a chance to register miles to them.

  24. Although I status matched six months ago I never got a card. However, I emailed TK and requested a card. They wrote back a day later and are (supposedly) sending me a card!

  26. Gary,

    I can’t find it on the Turkish Airlines site, but I assume that elite qualifying miles requires travel on TK metal? With UA, at least, partner miles are not qualifying.

    I sent them my UA 1K and AA Exec Platinum cards and they did a status match. I hope my card arrives!

  27. Just received an e-mail this morning in response to my request for status match:

    Dear xxxx,

    Referring to your e-mail message dated October 06,2012 , Elite card status match has been provided and your membership has been updated as ” Elite Card ” level.

    We would like to be honoured to see you as an Elite member for your future flights by Turkish Airlines.

    Kind Regards,
    TURKISH AIRLINES INC.
    CUSTOMER RELATIONS MANAGEMENT

  28. @Jered – Partner miles will help you qualify on United! And you don’t have to fly any miles on Turkish to qualify or re-qualify.

  29. Email received from Turkish Airlines today:

    We Have received your e-mail message dated 06.10.2012.

    In order to evaluate your request about Gold membership status match, we would like you to send the copy of your Gold memberhsip card together with the copy of your membership statement to following e-mail adress; customermiles@thy.com
    Thank you for choosing Turkish Airlines on your flights. Kind Regards,

    TURKISH AIRLINES INC.
    CUSTOMER RELATIONS MANAGEMENT

  30. will this status match also work to get through the priority security lines? in that case would you have to put the TK number and then change to the United (or whatever other carrier) at the gate?

    thanks

  31. I requested a status match twice, once with my AA Platinum and then a few days ago with my Delta Gold, sending copies of the card and statement each time.. both times i received the same response email that Helena Smith has quoted above… after which i resent the same stuff.
    match never happened the first time with AA (a month ago), maybe it will work this time..? Anyone have any experience similar to this??

  32. How long did it take to hear back from TK? I emailed about a week ago asking for match to UA Gold and haven’t heard anything.

  33. @Rslev, Did you get the email stating they received your request? That’s the only communication I received. I logged into my TK account a few days later and the status had been granted.

  34. I sent request on a Friday and status was matched following Tuesday. I have not received a card from them yet, but anyone else get one?

  35. U have a card, it took about 6 weeks. They hadn’t responded to my status match request after a week so I re-forwarded it and they responded in hours with a match.

  36. My account has now been cancelled! This is quite bizarre.. I requested a match, didn’t receive one and instead kept getting back an email that said:

    We Have received your e-mail message dated 15.10.2012.
    In order to evaluate your request about Gold membership status match, we would like you to send the copy of your Gold memberhsip card together with the copy of your membership statement to following e-mail adress; customermiles@thy.com
    Thank you for choosing Turkish Airlines on your flights. Kind Regards,

    TURKISH AIRLINES INC.
    CUSTOMER RELATIONS MANAGEMENT

    And I would resend the requested info and now they’ve cancelled my account! Does anyone have a similar experience?

  37. @BostonSun there are a bunch of reports recently of cancelled accounts from folks who shouldn’t have had any problems, something very odd afoot that isn’t in any way likely related to matching requests.

  38. Huh.. well thanks for the response. that really is odd. Maybe I’ll try signing up for an account again in a few days.. really wanted the *A match 🙁

  39. FWIW, I posted about getting a status match on 10/10, and just received my card today (10/27).

  40. Additionally, the welcome letter also says “you can earn status miles when you fly with Turkish Airlines […] as we as with Star Alliance member airlines.” That’s huge. I fly well more than 100K miles on United, and would gladly spend some of those “excess” flight miles on keeping lounge access.

  41. I seem to be the only one left commenting on this post, but figured I’d add some data points since I had the opportunity to use my Turkish Airlines card this past weekend flying BOS-ORD round trip.

    I was very happy to find my card was honored at the United Club in Boston. On the return flight, however, I was told by the agent that it was only valid if I were connecting from an international flight. I’m pretty sure she was mistaken, but since my flight was boarding in 15 minutes I didn’t raise a fuss.

    I’m guessing she wasn’t paying attention and did not notice it was not a MileagePlus card. Regardless, I would warn any *G member to expect potential trouble on US domestic-only travel.

  42. @Jared the agent is incorrect, you could of course carry a copy of the rules with you or ask them to check with a supervisor (they will be quite cross with you when they find out they are wrong)

  43. Data point.

    Re: post 29 – I received the welcome pack on 10/31, so about a 3 week wait between approval and physical receipt.

  44. Update: Account was reinstated after I sent in lots of (requested) info including a copy of my passport. Requested match about 3 times after that.. last one was Nov 28. Received the gold kit in the mail yesterday, 12/3! 🙂

  46. I also got my Gold kit this week, approx 12/3/12. Odd, since I’ve been Gold since February 2012, re-requested about 1-2 months ago. Gary, it would be really cool if your blog could support month/day/year for comments, or at least for your initial entries, which only have the month/day.

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