New United Mileage Plus Status Match Challenge

United Airlines is out with a status match opportunity for 2025 whereby you can get your elite status with another airline matched to United temporarily. Then, after meeting a set of reduced requirements within a 120-day period, you can extend your United status through the remainder of the program year.

The Deal

• United Mileage Plus is once again offering a status match challenge. If approved for the challenge, you’ll get instant Mileage Plus status for 120 days with the chance to extend that status through the end of the 2025 program year with the following activity:
  • Premier Silver:  Fly 5 Premier Qualifying Flights (PQF) and earn 1,700 Premier Qualifying Points (PQP) on flights operated by United or United Express
  • Premier Gold: Fly 10 PQF and earn 3.400 PQP on flights operated by United or United Express
  • Premier Platinum: Fly 15 PQF and earn 5,000 PQP on flights operated by United or United Express
• Direct link to this deal

Airline programs eligible for status match

Terms and Conditions

• Offer is not valid for members who have participated in the MileagePlus^® Status Match program or received a Premier Status Exception within the last 5 years
• To request a MileagePlus Status Match, a participant must be an authenticated member of MileagePlus and hold an active account with an eligible airline and have an eligible elite level valid for the current calendar year.
• Members who hold elite status because of a trial or temporary elite status in the other airline program, are not eligible for the MileagePlus Premier Status Match program.
• Requests from members who otherwise meet the criteria for a Premier Status Match will not receive such status if the member already holds equivalent or higher status in the MileagePlus Program.
• Members who have successfully submitted the required documentation and who have met the eligibility criteria to participate in the Premier Status Match offer must complete an Activating Flight before being granted Premier Silver, Premier Gold or Premier Platinum status. Such status will become effective within five to seven business days after completing an Activating Flight. An “Activating Flight” is a flight operated by United or United Express^® that is completed within 90 days after the documentation that you submit for this offer is approved and the flight is posted to the member’s MileagePlus account.
• Members who do not complete an Activating Flight in the required time period, will no longer be eligible for the Premier Status Match offer, and are not eligible to again submit for a Premier Status Match in the same calendar year.
• Complimentary Premier status will be effective for 120 days starting from the date of the Activating Flight (“Challenge Period”).
• If during the registration process, the member identifies themselves as having flown on a United or United Express flight(s) in the past 30 days, that has already posted to their MileagePlus Account and has a flight date on or after January 1, 2025, we will complete a one-time review, and if eligible, we will consider it the Activating Flight. If a member has more than one United flight in the past 30 days, we will consider the earliest flight flown as the Activating Flight. This request may only be made at the time of document submission.
• Offer only valid on flights operated by United and United Express. Not valid on United-marketed codeshare flights operated by other carriers.
• Flights must be posted to the MileagePlus account in order to qualify. PQP earned for the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges count toward this offer. PQP and PQF earned from United and United Express travel on MileagePlus Award tickets or where members have selected Money + Miles as their payment option are eligible towards this offer. PQP earned from Economy Plus seating, preferred seat purchases, MileagePlus Upgrade Award co-pays, paid upgrades do count towards this offer. PQP earned from Economy Plus subscriptions, promotional PQF or PQP, PQP earned from conversion of other currencies, and/or credit card PQF or PQP do not count toward this offer. Basic Economy tickets earn PQP but do not earn PQF.
• Through this offer, members will not be able to qualify for a higher Premier status level than the one they are matched to in MileagePlus, even if they fly more than the qualifying travel requirements during the Challenge Period. However, members will be able to qualify to a higher status level if they reach one of the published qualification thresholds for Premier status.
• Earned 2025 Premier status is valid through January 2026. The MileagePlus status is valid through January 2027 for customers who earn Premier status through this offer on or after July 1, 2025.

Quick Thoughts

United has again brought back their annual status match challenge, with slightly elevated qualification thresholds – each tier now requires around ~20% more PQF and PQP than last year. The temporary status doesn’t begin until after your first post-registration flight (referred to as the “activating flight”) and is then valid for 120 days from that point.

Given that, you’d want to time your match request for a period when you anticipate flying the number of United cash fares that you would need to complete the challenge.  You can only do it once every 5 years, so I would only recommend going after this challenge if you anticipate being able to make good use of the benefits during the 2025 program year.

While United publishes the table above to indicate which statuses from other airlines correspond to the various United Mileage Plus status levels, the chart is a “partial list”. In other words, if you have status with an unlisted airline, you aren’t necessarily out of luck.

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