Back in 2013 when Aegean was still offering an extremely easy route to “lifetime” Star Alliance Gold by only earning 19,000 qualifying miles, I took advantage of this to get Aegean Gold status. It was great times with priority boarding, security, checked bags and Star Alliance lounge access, even domestically!
In September 2014, after realizing that people were heavily taking advantage of this route to gain Star Alliance Gold easily without much effort to renew the status, Aegean made it harder to obtain Gold this way, requiring 24,000 qualifying miles flown on Aegean or 48,000 qualifying miles flown on Aegean and Star Alliance partners. Furthermore, Aegean notified existing Golds that their status would actually expire at some point. All existing Gold customers would be transferred to the new Gold Tier when the program changed in November 2014.
I got this email about a week ago, 2 months after a warning email in September about retaining my Aegean Gold status.
Even though my original membership card said my status was valid until 12/2015, and the new membership card I got after the transition said my status was valid until 1/24/2016, indeed, I was downgraded, 1 year after the transfer to the new program in November 2014.
So you’re telling me this *isn’t* valid anymore?
I’m not going to make a fuss, because fortunately, my Copa PremierMiles Gold card just arrived! And I also still have United MileagePlus Gold that will expire end of January, 2016. You can’t keep me out of your lounges!!!
My plans next year are to requalify for American Platinum and reattempt a match to Turkish Airlines Gold. I tried to match to Turkish Gold earlier this year from Aegean and United gold, but either because there was very little activity in either account, or technical difficulties, they just keep asking for a statement with activity within the last 3 months, so I gave up and matched to Copa instead.