A few years back I had the unpleasant experience of going from Chairman's Preferred on US Airways, which no longer exists, to Executive Platinum on American, wh

A few years back I had the unpleasant experience of going from Chairman's Preferred on US Airways, which no longer exists, to Executive Platinum on American, which US Airways merged with. I gave it a little over a year to see if they could solve the problems. Aside from just the teething issues of a major-airline merger, AA's approach to customer service was horrid, their reliability was in the toilet (ask me how many times I had connections in AA hubs on time versus how many times I spent the night involuntarily!), etc. So I jumped ship. I will never set foot in a United aircraft of my own free will, so I looked at Delta, which had and still has excellent reliability and satisfaction ratings from their frequent flyers. And it was relatively simple to set up a status match with them. I provided a photograph of my then-current AA Executive Platinum credentials, and they enrolled me. I had 90 days to meet a mileage/segments target, and if I did I'd be Delta Platinum for the following year. The target was, IIRC, just under 19,000 miles, and I hit it with about a month to spare. The only catch to a status match is generally you can only do it once. If you later lose status, or switch to another airline, they will not let you match back. Some airlines will also let you trial your way into status with no pre-existing credentials. When and whether and how they offer those varies a lot from airline to airline.