Sales Tools for Startups

Most sales professionals, even those who don't hold titles like "outside sales" or "field sales", will see periods of significant travel in their career. In 2012, I did a modest 46k miles in 27 segments on Air Canada, which was sufficient for Aeroplan Elite status and came with it Star Alliance Gold status. 

A quick reminder: Most airlines belong to one of three alliances: Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam. You can earn miles and status miles on partner airlines of the same alliance, although the you see the best service when you fly on your primary carrier.

Unfortunately, when Air Canada announced a change to the program, it meant that my hard earned status would be degraded from Star Alliance Gold to Star Alliance Silver, losing key perks such as lounge access and priority boarding (as well as priotty baggage, extra baggage allowance, etc.). 

The change was announced before Christmas, so I had time to book a milage run ticket to bring me to the 50k mark, which would have secured me a place in the new Air Canada Latitude 50k tier, but I opted for two status matches instead. 

The first was Alaska. I accumulated 10k in their Mileage Plan program, as they offer the cheapest flights from YYJ to SFO, both cities where we have officies in. Alaska is actually a funny airline, in that they don't belong to an alliance but have partners such as Delta, and Kenmore Air, who operate a harbour to harbour service from Victoria to Seattle. 

It took me a few tries, as the material online references an out of date status match procedure, but eventually got through to the right people. For future reference, you need the following: 

Requirements for Alaska Air status match:

• A screen shot or print out of your frequent flyer balance
• A photo of the matched airlines frequent flier program (in my case, Aeroplan) 
• A photo of your driver's license <-- This one is unusual

Email those 3 items, along with your Alaska MVP number to "elite.flyer@alaskaair.com" (not mileage.plan@alaskaair.com) and it'll get the process started.

Alaska Airlines welcome email

In took about two weeks, but I eventually got an email announcing my match was completed.

Now Alaska doesn't get me Star Alliance Gold, but it does set me up to start flying more with them. For Star Alliance Gold, I chose a different source: Turkish Airlines. Interestingly, most airlines won't status match against other partners in the same alliance, ostensibly to keep things civil amongst the airlines who are supposed to be friends. Turkish is the exception, and after signing up for the Miles and Smiles program, I started the process.

Here to, the information online is a bit out of date. Emailing "customermiles@thy.com" goes to a black hole, and after repeated attempts got a personal email from a rep indicating that address was no longer monitored, and instead to use the new contact form:

http://www4.thy.com/customercontact/?lang=en

Unfortunately, at the time of writing I still haven't heard anything. Reports online seem to indicate that Turkish Air has frozen their status match program, and no new matches have been processed for 2013.

Turkish Air comment form

The form allows you to input other frequent flier numbers, as well as uploading the necessary documents (same as Alaska, only without the drivers license). 

Lastly, a fun little detail when using that contact form at Turkish Airlines. You can label a feedback type as "Demand". No word on if this increases response times or not.