Overview of lifetime airline status tiers & requirements

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Many frequent flyers consider lifetime status to be the "holy grail" of airline loyalty.

Around 21 airlines that are part of Oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam currently offer some form of lifetime status, and Virgin Australia will add its own "Forever Gold" tier later this year. In this article, we compare all the options:


Do you have lifetime status with an airline, or are you working towards it? If so, which frequent flyer program did you choose, and how did you/will you get it?
 
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I have lifetime UA Platinum status (*G), earned over 25 years of flying 2.5 million miles with United and Continental, mainly in the USA. It also comes with the same lifetime status for my wife, and lifetime membership of the United Club (lounge access).

So not too bad really, but I no longer fly UA or travel to the America's (by choice), so it's mainly useful for lounge access when flying other Star Alliance airlines (and VA). Not much use for avoiding paying for seat selection though (an issue with most Star airlines, unlike One World).
 

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