Back at the beginning of June (and again in July), Etihad was offering a status match to the first 500 members to send in a scanned copy of their gold or higher tier membership card and mileage statement from any other airline. I never heard back and just assumed that I was not one of the first 500. However, yesterday I received the following email from Etihad:
Great, so now what? Well, the majority of benefits for Gold members are already provided to passengers traveling in first or business class and are only available when actually flying on Etihad. As they are not a member of an alliance, there are no reciprocal lounge benefits either.  However, they do have one valuable benefit for Gold members which is not otherwise available:
Chauffeur Service –Â Etihad Guest Gold members can enjoy this service at all points throughout their journey when traveling in our Pearl Business or Diamond First Class.
I wasn’t sure if this applied to award flights, but I just called and I’m now confirmed for chauffeur pickup on my “Burn my HHonors Points” Maldives trip for December! Well worth the 5 minutes it took me to apply for the match…
Did you receive your match?
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6 comments
So you applied for a status match with the thought that the status match had absolutely no value for you. Kind of a selfish move in my opinion given that there were only a limited number of status matches and it could have gone to someone that it actually had value for.
It ended up working out for you in the end, but I think it was kind of a bad move.
@Seth – I hear you. In my eyes, I was also considering the intrinsic value of being able to use the status to match to another carrier
Awesome! I didn’t apply for the status match since I never fly Etihad but good for you. From looking at this site, though, it seems that Silver members have access to the Chauffeur service as well when flying Pearl Business class.
http://www.etihadairways.com/sites/etihad/trades/global/en/OurProducts/Pages/GuestTransfer.aspx
I got the match too! You do get 2x miles with Etihad Gold, so worth it for that. I’d also recommend doing the Business Connect program.
Got denied for not making the first 500
Also got rejected. Was actually planning to fly Etihad a few times next coming months, now not going to. These kind of promotions can turn against them as well as we ff are so petty 😉