Reader Jered asks, “Will any airline do million miler status matches?”

In other words, if you’ve flown enough or otherwise earned lifetime status with an airline, will another carrier give you that same lifetime status?

In general the answer is no. However, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, so I can’t make the ‘no’ claim quite so definitively.

• Lifetime status is status, so it’s frequently possible to use the lifetime status you have earned to get temporary comped status with another airline.
  
• It’s not correct to say that no airline has ever offered lifetime status based on a match. First, Aegean’s terms and conditions used to make their status lifetime and while they don’t generally status match they did offer that match for bmi Diamond Club gold members when British Airways acquired bmi. A decade ago Airtran offered a broad status match campaign, and A+ Rewards status used to be lifetime.
  
• KLM ran a program a little over a decade ago where they matched the total balance in a member’s account, not just a member’s status, with modest flying. There are still lifetime Platinums in the combined Air France KLM Flying Blue program coming out of that campaign.

That said, I can’t just take my American Airlines 3 Million Mile Lifetime Platinum status and ask United or Delta to make me a corresponding million miler in their programs.

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