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I recently wrote about an interesting World of Hyatt / American Airlines AAdvantage partnership, which provides reciprocal status matches/challenges. At the time, I matched my American Airlines elite status to my Hyatt account and was given 90 days of free World of Hyatt ‘Explorist’ status and a fast track to keep it until February 2021.

The only reason I had American Airlines elite status at the time was because AA had (very generously!) decided to offer a free trial to many members in the UK at the start of the year. I matched across to Hyatt on the 14th May and my temporary AA status expired on the 16th May, so that was a perfectly timed little extra bonus!

My esteemed colleague Craig, who already has top-level Hyatt status (but no AA status at the time) wrote about how he was offered a match/challenge from Hyatt to AA – as I mentioned, the AA/Hyatt partnership is designed to offer reciprocal benefits to members of both programmes.

What is interesting is that although my AA status has now expired, I still get to keep my Hyatt status for the full 90 days. What is even more interesting is that when I logged into my AA account today, I saw a new offer:

Yep, that’s right – AA is now offering me a status match/challenge because of my temporary Hyatt status! To be clear, that’s the same temporary Hyatt status that I only have because I matched from AA.

The terms of my new AA match are as follows:

Take your World of Hyatt Explorist status to the next level and enjoy free AAdvantage® Gold status for 3 months after you register.

Keep your AAdvantage® Gold status through January 31, 2021 by earning the required Elite Qualifying Dollars (EQDs) and either the required Elite Qualifying Miles (EQMs) or Elite Qualifying Segments (EQSs) between the date you register and the date 3 months after you register:

• $1,000 EQDs and either 7,000 EQMs or 8 EQSs

Rules:

Qualifying EQDs, EQMs and EQSs to extend status are earned when you fly on eligible tickets for flights operated by American Airlines or marketed by American, American Eagle®, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia and Japan Airlines.

AA Gold is equivalent to BA Bronze/oneworld Ruby, which isn’t anything to get too excited about, but is certainly nice to have. Benefits include:

• Complimentary upgrades on flights 500 miles or less within North America (confirmed as early as 24 hours before departure)
• Priority check-in, security and boarding
• 7 award miles/U.S. dollar (40% bonus)
• Complimentary access to Preferred seats
• 1 free checked bag
• oneworld® Ruby℠ status on partner airlines

Bottom line

The moral of the story is that it sometimes pays to actually read the emails that travel companies bombard everyone with (and to read InsideFlyer UK, obviously 😉 ). AA originally gave me free Platinum Pro status in January, which I matched to Hyatt Explorist in mid May (just before the AA status expired), and now I can match the Hyatt status back to AA Gold for 3 months.

In other words, AA has given me ~7 months of free elite status in total this year, and 3 months worth of free Hyatt status on top!

Have you got a similar offer on your account?