DJ Gold - no man's land when chasing status - how do you cope?

[ermen]

I am probably not adding any value here but more of a rant! I don't usually fly DJ but was thinking of checking out the new product and lounge to see if it was worth trying to move some flying to DJ to chase gold especially with their tie-up with SQ...

So my 4pm flight from PER to SYD was cancelled this afternoon due to another late arrival of an aircraft (2nd time this has happened on DJ) and I am regretting my decision to fly DJ (where I have no
status) instead of QF where I am WP.

1/ No flights till 6am the next morning
2/ Unable to online check-in at the DJ website - meaning that I will have to check-in at the airport and will probably be unable to sit with my wife who unfortunately is on a different booking given full flight + OLCI pax
3/ 20 min waits to get hold of customer service
4/ Ordinary service from the DJ service desk

I guess it is only in bad circumstances where you truly will appreciate the benefits of having top tier status with an airline! How I wish I could just pickup the phone and call the QF WP line to fix things up!

So, to all forumites - how do you cope when trying to get status with another airline? Do you normally ask for comp status or just suck it up for 6 months and be in status no man's land?

 

[allitsab]

I share your pain. Some 12 months ago now, QF outright lied to me while asking for an aisle seat in the pub (5 minutes after my request, a colleague picked up an aisle seat, with the guest services people telling him there were plenty available - when I go back and enquire again - sorry, none left), so I embarked on a quest to pick up DJ status.

The first few months were ok, until a similar flight cancellation happened to me (SYD-ADL, 6am flight - next flight ~11am, meaning I miss my meeting AND my return flight). I was not notified until I arrived at the airport, but fortunately, my business uses one of those corporate travel agent services and I was able to fix it up through them (though their solution was to fly jetstar there).

The only other "issue" I had to cope with was lining up flights with colleagues, who are all QP junkies, however that was mostly OK. In fact, I'd say that, from my experience at least, that the DJ flights ended up on time more often, but when they were late, they were VERY late - ie a QF flight might have averaged lets say 10 mins late; whereas the DJ flights were mostly on time, except for the 1 or 2 that were 2 hours late....

I was surprised at how easy it was to pick up an aisle seat even without status, which really made my status chase much easier (at 194cm, an aisle seat is a necessity).

However, I can assure you that once you reach gold it is very worth it - the lounges are much less busy than the QP ever was (a big plus in my book - QP is mostly more noisy than the general terminal), the lounge angels are every bit angels, and recently on board the flight attendants have been doing great things like finally offering up the premium economy seats that are mostly unoccupied.

 

[markis10]

The simple answer to your question is to status match where possible then use it, which is exactly what I did late last year, now 6 months on I have my Gold requal in the bag and are actually shooting for DJ Platinum when they work out the qual for it. I flew DJ on the weekend and I am very happy with the way they handled the issues including an unexpected overnight stay, the service received was as good if not better than that received by QF in similar circumstances in the past.

 

[connieguy]

how do you cope when trying to get status with another airline? Do you normally ask for comp status or just suck it up for 6 months and be in status no man's land?

With DJ you can get Gold doing 5 Mel/Bne/Ntl or reverse SC runs in Y+. Cost around A$1,800. Some here have already started doing them. Flying DJ Y+ you earn DJ J SCs and get Lounge access / Priority Check-in / Security access, excess baggage, etc. So not too painful or expensive or time consuming (3 days). I'm planning to do the 5 runs in about 2 weeks and will then start placing some of my international long haul business with DJ and their group as I will then have the partner airline privileges from the DJ Gold.

I see this as something like AA's Platinum Challenge, were instead of granting a Status Match, they reduce the normal AA Platinum threshold. Being QF WP, AA will not Status Match. But why would they as I already have QF WP and full AA Lounge and other top tier status privileges? Why do it? Because of the free and unlimited domestic J upgrades and the 8 system wide J upgrades per year that I will get as a AA Exp.

Will be interesting to see if either or both QF and DJ offer some version of that to their top tier FFers. With the latest DJ offer via Amex, I see DJ getting close to doing for their Platinums, something like AA does for their EXPs.

We live in interesting times and I for one love to see a new dog on the block starting to make significant changes.