Hey guys, I have just turned 18 years old and my father has given me a job in his accounting office.

Hey guys,

I have just turned 18 years old and my father has given me a job in his accounting office. I live on the Gold Coast.

I am a QF Gold member due to traveling between Brisbane and Sydney, and Melbourne alot with QF and Jetstar over the last year while learning about my Dad's business. I am finding now, that I am going to Melbourne alot more and I don't like the fact that to fly with Qantas I have to transit via Sydney, or make the trip up to Brisbane (waste of time). Also, in the next few months I will travel to Auckland a few times which is direct from the Gold Coast with Air NZ and Virgin.

I'm also planning to go to Bali at the end of the year, and that would be most likely from Brisbane with Virgin, as I don't think Qantas flies to Bali?

I want to start flying Virgin, purely because I think that for the Gold Coast, they probably serve us better then Qantas does.

As I said before, I am a QF Gold member, and I don't want to have to accumulate the status credits with Virgin all over again. Is there anyway that I would be able to convince them to match my status with Virgin. I want access to the Virgin lounge (after seeing the quality of it compared to qantas in both Sydney, Melbourne, and Gold Coast, I am very impressed :).

Do any of you guys have any advice for me? I know they ran a similar campaign about 2 years ago but at that time I wasn't really travelling much so it wasn't an issue for me.

Thanks heaps!

Also, on a side note I don't like alot of the Qantas service. Recently I was coming back from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. The Melbourne to Sydney flight was 1hr delayed and I missed my flight to Gold Coast. It was the last flight of the day. There was a plane leaving for Brisbane, and for some reason Qantas refused to let me on that plane and I had to spend the night in Sydney. Such a waste of time...

No chance I was in your position 18 months ago wtih QF Platinum you'll have to work your way up, that said I'm already platinum 6 months ago with virgin also now working up from the bottom with twice per week travel to melbourne and sydney so by the sounds of your frequency it wont take long. Like you have alluded to virgin will also be much better you for bali from gc

Sorry forgot to add that I did call virgin to request a status match with no luck

Phoning the call centre won't get you anywhere. I did a bit of searching on the Virgin website for the appropriate contact and managed to get a status "match" using my QF Platinum and was given a pilot period of VA Gold for 3 months in which I needed to earn 80 SCs to retain Gold. This was back in October.

There may even be a QF OOL-MEL service coming online soon. We'll have to wait and see.

Hey peter any chance you could forward that contact that you had onto me? Or point me in the right direction.

I have found a way, using my dads pooling. He is flying Business to Auckland and return next week, and then the week after we are both doing the Auckland trip together, with Air NZ. Does anyone know if we can family pool if we are travelling on the same flight?

Hey Andrew, you can certainly pool if you on the same flight. Just make sure you login into your Dad's account and have him pool his points and status credits to you. As stated above, it shouldnt take you long to rack up 500 status credits given the amount of travelling you do. Booking Flexi Fares would also excellerate the process.

Good luck Andrew!

For all of you in the know, any chance of going the other way and getting a QF status match?
I've reached VA Platinum very quickly as I've had an intense period of both work and leisure travel. I have an international flight booked with QF at Christmas time and would LOVE a status match (International First Lounge, anyone?!).

I could give them a pretty convincing case. My work travel is frequent, either business or flexi econ and not tied to any airline, and I travel with my partner for leisure 3-5 times a year.
I would normally just suck it up and get it the hard way but I just won't have enough work travel this year to do it.

What are the chances of a status match?

I calculated it all, and based off my current 100 virgin sc, I can achieve silver by the end of july with my dad's pooling. However, as my period ends on the 16th of july, I don't think I will have enough to requaliify :(. So I will have to start again. I think I will give the call centre a call! I have been reading that they are giving alot of "trial golds" out.