SAA Voyager - no benefits on partner airlines?

[Mattg]

As you may know, South African Airways is a Star Alliance member and a Virgin Australia partner airline. It's also one of the airlines you can choose as the status airline when you get the HSBC Star Alliance credit card.

I sent an email to South African Airways last month to ask what (if any) benefits SAA Voyager Gold (and above) members receive when flying with Virgin Australia. I just received the following response:

We have been experiencing a high volume of queries. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delayed response and the inconvenience caused.

Kindly be advised that you get all those benefits when travelling on SAA operating or marketing flights only, not on Star Alliance partners.

To learn more on the benefits you may follow the below link.

Gold Membership Benefits

For further assistance please contact our Voyager Call Centre on +27 (0)11 978 1234.

Thank you for making South African Airways the carrier of your choice. We truly value your business and look forward to seeing you on-board soon.

For ease of reference in future correspondence regarding this enquiry, please quote your service request number as provided above.

Kind regards
SAA Voyager Service Centre

There are a couple of issues with this response:

• As SAA is a Star Alliance member, of course you should receive Star Alliance Gold benefits on other Star Alliance airlines
• In any case, this wasn't even the question that I asked. I asked about benefits on Virgin Australia, and the response doesn't even touch on that.

Either way, I think it's safe to say that SAA Voyager is not the best airline to choose as your status airline!