Continental Changes Status Match Program: Don't Bother Unless You Live in the Air

 Today, Continental changed the method that you use to match your status from another carrier if you are contemplating a change.  Instead of matching and capping your possible status at Gold, they are moving to a challenge system, where you will be awarded status for 90 days, and can maintain it if you fly a certain amount on Continental, Continental Express, Continental Connection, United, or United Express Only.  Another positive is that you can now match once every five years, instead of once in your lifetime.  Also, the main benefit over challenges by other airlines is that you do not have to pay for the challenge.  However that is where the benefits end.

Continental has made the challenges extremely hard to obtain as shown as follows

• Silver: 10,000 Miles or 15 Segments
• Gold: 17,500 Miles or 22 Segments
• Platinum: 35,000 or 40 Segments

While these numbers may seem reasonable, when compared to the requirements to outright earn the status, combined with the short time frame, it is insane.  Especially is someone is based at a Continental Hub.  

While the numbers for Continental don't look bad on the surface, think about the average amount of flying someone would normally be doing to earn the respective level.  Someone flying on segments would roughly be flying 7.5-15 segments in a quarter normally.  This means that without the benefit of a segment/mileage run, someone has to be flying the maximum they would ordinarily be flying for the period just to meet the status at the lower levels.  And unfortunately it gets even worse on a segment level if you challenge for a higher level, as gold, the average is between 15 and 25 segments a quarter (slight gain in comparison to most programs at the high end of gold, but those are not as many as you might think, and falls at the exact amount of your pace to earn platinum for the next year if you started Jan. 1) and more than 25 segments a quarter for platinum.

And to make matters worse, the challenges are not competitive with the challenges offered by American and US.  The most pathetic thing is that while Continental is pushing you to the extremes in short time based on your existing travel patterns, US makes it easy (I know US is a different tier in service quality, but upgrades are easy and you have the exact same benefits on other Star Alliance Airlines as you would with Continental)

• Silver: 7,500 Miles or 10 Segments
• Gold: 15,000 Miles or 20 Segments
• Platinum: 22,500 Miles or 30 Segments
• Chairman's: 30,000 Miles or 40 Segments

While US does charge a fee, you do not need to have existing status and can do the challenge once every 2 years. 

American's challenge is even easier to achieve, and the Gold can be earned in just one transcon round trip in the right fare class, as you have to earn 5,000 points in 90 days.  I just did a sample routing from RDU to SEA, and it is no problem to achieve this on just about any day.

So while it is nice that Continental is not charging for the match challenge and it is no longer once in a lifetime, the requirements are extremely hard.  I would even say that you would have to do a mileage/segment run (or more depending on travel patterns) if you are only flying in the US.

(Thanks to Lucky for the heads up)