Sunday Reader Question: How do I get a Turkish Airlines status match?
Turkish Airlines, a Star Alliance carrier, has been offering an extremely generous status match program for a number of years. It’s a relatively easy process, and this Sunday Reader Question addresses: How do I get a Turkish Airlines status match?
Things you’ll need:
– A status card at the Star Alliance Gold level equivalent (50,000 miles) with another Star Alliance, One World, or Skyteam carrier. Scan the front of the card. Save it in PDF form.
– A screenshot/PDF print of your online account summary with the other program. Don’t worry if you don’t have any transaction history (for example, because you’re status matching from a status match), as they don’t seem to care.
– A Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles account in the same name of your competitor account.
Step (1): Go to the Contact Us form.
Step (2): Click “New Feedback”
Step (3): Enter the following:
Step (4): Enter a simple and concise request in the comments box. I suggest something along the lines of “Please find attached a PDF of my Frequent Flyer Card and my account history with XX which shows my status of XX, which is equivalent to Turkish Airlines Elite (Star Alliance Gold). Please process a status match to Turkish Airlines Elite (Star Alliance Gold). Thank you.”
Step (5): Attach the PDF documents. I would suggest merging those two PDFs into one document.
Step (6): Select “Yes” to “Would you like us to reply to your feedback?”
Step (7): Login to your Miles&Smiles account and click submit.
Step (8): Wait. I’m finding that status matches are being processed within 48 hours. Sometimes this can take longer. If after two weeks you’re not upgraded, submit your application again. Note that the email informing you of the upgrade can happen much later than your actual upgrade. Login to your Miles&Smiles account to see if you’ve been upgraded before re-submitting.
Step (9): Miles&Smiles will mail you a card within a couple of weeks. Otherwise, if you’re ever at Istanbul IST airport, you can get a card made up on the spot at one of the Miles&Smiles kiosks. What I usually do is click “Lost Card” once I’m granted the status match, as this expedites the process.
Congratulations! You now have Star Alliance Gold for 2 years! To renew your status, you will have to either (a) get 25,000 status miles in the first year, or (b) 37,500 status miles in two years.
There are some tricks to get the status again without renewing, however, I’ll leave that up to you to figure out 😉
Thanks A
I shall try a match with my A3 Gold (expiring Nov 2015) then. I will sure miss it once it’s gone
I haven’t looked into this, but would the trick involve swapping overlapping Status matches?
e.g. Match with TK, then match with OW/ST, then back with *A?
Man, not knowing is killing me now, I should read up on flyertalk more if it’s in there 🙂
They do seem to now want recent activity…within the last two month. I’m UA platinum MM star gold and was turned down since I don’t have activity within the last two months.
They do ask for activity within the last two months, but you may leave the application opened until you get to travel. I believe the route taken within the two months is not important as far as you have credited miles in your A3 *G account.
Good luck!
I can’t seem to find the “tricks to get the status again without renewing”. Could please shed some light about them? Thanks!
Sorry, that’s my little secret 😉
Can we get a hint???
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this useful info. I just matched my A3 gold with a Turkish Elite card. But there are several things quite interesting in the process worth sharing.
When I first submit the request, my photocopy/account statement failed to upload. That is because the website needs several seconds to process the upload – if you click ‘submit’ right after adding the attachment, you will jump out of that page and your attachment will not be added to your request. So always wait after that page tells you the upload is done.
Then due to this technical problem TK wrote me a letter requesting my photocopy and statement. I edited my request and added that file. (That was actually a great user-feedback system.)
About a week later I got an email saying I was bumped to Classic Plus, which is a silver level. I was kinda disappointed so didn’t wrote back to them or try to match again. And then another week later, I got another email telling me I was upgraded to Elite level. How nice of them.
So I personally suspect that even if you don’t have any gold card to match with, you could still submit the request and do not attach anything. They probably would give you a silver card.
Thanks!
Hi! Thanks for the detailed info. I’ve just done a status match from Aegean, which expires in December. I’ve only got one recent flight that has been credited to my account recently, but it was a few days ago, so hopefully this counts in the whole “travelled in the last two months” thing.
I’ll let you know what happens. Thanks again.
Hi!
May you tell if it worked?
I am platinum on AA which translates to Sapphire on One World. This requires 50,000 plus miles. I notice one of the posters indicated you need to be Emerald. Is that accurate or is Sapphire sufficient?
Thanks,
Many thanks for sharing!
Just sent my status match request from United gold (expires Jan16).
Got one flight segment with United during last couple of months and 10 with Turkish on my Miles&More frequent traveler card.
Will update how it works out 😉
Hello,
I submitted a request in December for status match and provided my PDF of Passport, Picture of my A3 Card expiring January 2016, and a online screenshot of the activity on my card (I don’t have too much) per below.
Should I submit a entirely new request?
But I keep getting this automated response (3 times now after I used the same reference number to upload the PDF file.
In order to evaluate your request, we would like you to send the copy of your ID/Passport, the original picture or copy of your Gold membership card’s front and back side together with card statement that shows flight activities up to last two months to Customer Contact Center by creating a file via the link bellow;
https://www4.thy.com/customercontact/index.tkf?lang=en
Thank you for choosing us on your travels.
Sincerely Yours,
Turkish Airlines INC.
Customer Relations Center
Sedul is offline
Hi guys,
I got status match challenge from Air France Platinum to Turkish Airlines Elite.
So they stated that trial period is 4 months in which I have to fly at least one international TK flight. So I did fly from Zagreb to Istanbul RT in W class and thing is that one week after flying with them I am still in trial program and my membership will expire for 3months even though my miles have been accumulated on M&S account. Anybody knows why? I have booked 4 transcontinental trips with TK in W class so it would be a bugger if they do not count W class.