Star Alliance: Benefits and privileges offered to United Airlines travelers with Silver status
When you have alliance status, you will have access to several benefits when flying with the alliance and United Airlines, which is an alliance member airline.
Star Alliance is the airline alliance with the largest number of airlines including United Airlines.
This group of airlines carries some 630 million passengers each year at 1,167 airports in 186 countries. It is estimated that between them they total more than 4,200 aircraft.
By being part of the frequent flyer program of one of the airlines in the alliance like United Airlines’ MileagePlus, users can accumulate their miles in this program when flying with the US airline.
The sum of these miles opens the door to obtaining Silver status which offers a series of advantages to their holders.
Although the airline alliance does not have its own frequent flyer program, you can obtain frequent flyer status for the entire network. It works like this: You are a member of MileagePlus, United Airlines’ frequent flyer program. If you’ve achieved Elite status there, you also qualify for Star Alliance frequent flyer status. It depends on the status you have in the freelance bonus program.
If you have this status, you can benefit from many advantages. On the one hand, it is the preferred booking or waiting list priority. This means: If there is no free space on a flight you have chosen, you will get a better place on the waiting list for this flight. Second, you get standby priority. This means: if there are changes in your trip, the desired flights are full, you will receive a higher priority on the waiting list. Both benefits do not apply when traveling on award tickets.
Benefits of silver status in Star Alliance
The benefits offered involve:
– Access to preferential registration;
– Access to preferred seats;
– Access to VIP lounges;
– Preferred boarding;
– Additional baggage allowance.
StarAlliance Silver status provides benefits for flights on United Airlines and its Star Alliance partners. This includes free seat selection and 25% bonus miles on US-operated flights.
– Priority in the waiting list
Travelers with Silver status allow them to have priority in the event that a flight is full or when there are no more seats left.
How does status matching work?
In order that the benefits could be extended to other partner companies, the alliances created a status matching system.
In practice, it works like this: your airline status will have an alliance status match. The higher your status in the airline’s frequent flyer program, the higher your status in the alliance.
When you find out what your alliance status is, you’ll know all the benefits you’ll get when flying United Airlines.
Having this status never hurts, even more so when it comes, in a way, for free. In the case of Star Alliance silver status, it is only an extension of your status with United Airlines, offering you several advantages when you fly with it or other operators belonging to the same alliance.