Is status match worth it?

Frequent Flyer Programs
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1

I’m flying Singapore Air, booked direct with them, added my virgin FF numbers to all the passengers flying. Two of us are gold status with virgin and thought we’d get all the benefits of that through the Singapore partnership. You kinda do, except it doesn’t seem to cover complimentary forward section seat selection which really adds up to a huge number if there are 3 of you flying and there are 4 legs to pay for. Singapore initially gave me the impression that I would only get the benefits of priority check-in, extra baggage, priority boarding, lounge access etc if we had booked the flights via the Virgin site (wrong) - then they said we had to do a status match and proceeded to put me through 10 hours of effort providing details, scans, back-and-forth, conflicting information. Then if we want free wifi on the plane there needs to be a krisflyer number on the boarding pass.

In the end I’ve got it in writing that my Velocity Gold will save me queuing with the rest of economy, I get the extra luggage below and up top, I get the lounge. I’ve given up on the status match as they keep throwing privacy rules requiring scanned information for my wife and daughter which I plugged in to the original booking and every tiny piece of their personal information is scanned and backed up on my PC.

So I suck up the seat selection which isn’t overly bad as I can get in first anyway and who needs wifi anyway?

2

oh…the only other bonus I can think of is that my gold status expires in March and my wife’s in August and that a status match would give us gold for 12 months from the match date. But I expect these flights with my daughter pooling to my wife that she’ll get to keep gold anyway if not get to platinum and be able to gift me back a gold status.

3

You’ll need to weigh up what additional benefit you get via Krisflyer Gold vs Velocity Gold. Then weight up the additional benefit(s) vs jumping through the required hoops of the status match, which you have already experienced much grief on. One potential is the potentially better status matches from a Krisflyer Gold status to other airlines (e.g. oneworld airlines) compared to that from Velocity Gold.

Wifi is a tricky one. If you want to credit the flight to Velocity, that needs to be the one on the booking before you board the flight.

However, that seems to be the same for Wifi access; you need to have KF number on your booking prior to boarding. Not a requirement if you are flying business class or higher.