Last week I covered Scandinavian Airlines moving from Star Alliance to SkyTeam with Air France KLM taking a stake – and their super easy status match. They gave me their SkyTeam elite plus status without even uploading proof of current status or residency (it was a geographically-restricted offer).
Star Alliance is responding in an even bigger way with a 13-airline status match offer.
- Star Alliance is ‘losing’ many of its customers in Northern Europe
- And SAS is trying to raid its members as well
- So members with current SAS status can pick the Star Alliance program they’d like to stay in as an alternative to EuroBonus
In fairness, many Star Alliance programs are going to be far better than the new EuroBonus and Star Alliance is the far better airline alliance. (EuroBonus is even charging double the miles published on their award chart for flights on Air Europa, China Airlines and Vietnam Airlines.) But if you were loyal to SAS it’s probably because of where you lived and the routes you flew which won’t be as easily replicated by another carrier.
I’ve only seen a coordinated status match offer of this kind once before, also from Star. I just wish it was broader than for those with SAS status!
Every Star Alliance member that’s participating has its own terms – such as a four month challenge to keep status, or status through all of 2025 (Air Canada) and even 24 months of status (Thai Airways).
Just choose wisely because you can only request a match to one program – and if that program rejects you, for instance if you’ve had a United match within the past five years – you won’t be able to match to a different one as part of this offer.
I am not a fan of Statusmatch.com. They are a personal data/privacy breach waiting to happen and are basically acting as a back door to allow airlines to collude. Remind me to get some people to file complaints to regulators about airlines colluding in much the same way as US rental property owners/management companies in some parts of the US colluded via “third party” service with cross-“competitor” data.
blocks SAS status match recipients. Same way Lufthansa was doing to its earlier status match.
Easier said than done to block all status matchers. And which consumers should really cares if there are a lot of chain status matchers given most of these “benefits” of status generally don’t deprive other passengers of guaranteed material benefits of program elite status since the airlines are often selling upgrades, lounge access and expedited security anyway.
For those who have done this, how does StatusMatch verify you were not just an SK status match recipient?
They can try to contact SAS and ask about the details of the account.
I don’t know if SAS is willing to let third parties such as statusmatch.com to plunder SAS member accounts for info when SAS have just gotten into OTP codes for accessing accounts.
Matthew,
If they call up SAS with the member info, the account’s status info may indicate how and when the status was acquired, when the status expires, how many bonus and level points there are in the account, previous credited flight activity, how many years of Gold status the person has had and membership qualification and expiration periods. Just the info about number of years of Gold status counting toward lifetime status and the membership and status qualification and expiration periods is enough info to have a pretty good idea about how the status was acquired.
But there are also SAS Golds who got Gold status as a giveaway from SAS Diamond members, I am curious what will go on with them since their accounts may look like status matched accounts even as they are not status matched accounts.
SAS Status Match recipient here. In fact, my proof was a screen shot of my profile which had 0s all the way through (points earned, miles flown, etc.) I got my Air Canada status match approved within hours.
Never worth it. It’s a LCC intra-Europe. Will connect with LH to Scandinavian destinations from now on. So sad.
Another SAS Status Match recipient here. I was (rightly) illegible (also selected AC):
Not eligible for a Status Match
The SAS EuroBonus membership details you provided in todays application do not meet the criteria for a Status Match:
The account did not earn status from flying activity
The account was recently received a status match elsewhere
Thank you for your interest.
A couple of people who had already gotten matched to LH Senator status from SAS earlier this summer were able to get approval for another Star Alliance airline status match from this status match.com offer when their SAS Gold account — which was matched this summer using other airline program status — had no activity in it. I have not been able to verify the accuracy of those reports.
To me, the easiest way to ensure that the match was approved was sending a picture of my current physical SK Gold card, together with another two expired SK Gold cards. The status was approved within a day.
where did you guys get status match to SAS? I have delta plat, wanted to be match to another skyteam, but they would only allowed from outside the alliance, so in need of one.
How do we see what the terms are for the different airlines? I didn’t see it on the landing page