Last month, British Airways (BA) had a status match allowing me, as a Delta Platinum Medallion member, to match to BA Gold status for six months. To keep the status for another year (or perhaps longer considering BA’s weird tier point reset dates), I would need to fly a paid round-trip flight in business class from the US. It’s possible I will do this when I go to Liverpool later this year, but even if I don’t keep the status beyond November, I’ve already made some use of it.

BA Gold status is OneWorld Emerald status which provides a lot of benefits when flying OneWorld airlines, including American, Alaska, Qatar, Japan Airlines, Finnair and others. These include: free preferred seats, free checked bags, priority check-in and most interestingly, lounge access even on domestic flights with additional access for one guest.

We flew American Airlines to and from Washington DC last weekend. It’s one of eight nonstop AA destinations from Atlanta which currently include NY LaGuardia, DC Reagan National, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Chicago O’Hare, Dallas, Phoenix and Los Angeles. If you are headed to one of those cities, it’s worth checking fares (both in cash and points) to see if you can get a better deal than on Delta. A big advantage to flying American out of Atlanta is that all flights now operate out of the T Concourse, so you can avoid lengthy trips on the PlaneTrain on departure and arrival.

About three weeks ago, we decided to make a weekend trip to Washington, DC to see our daughter and her boyfriend. I managed to find two seats using British Airways Avios in First Class for 16500 Avios per person each way for this past weekend. I have plenty of BA Avios as I took advantage of an American Express transfer bonus last year. I booked us an early morning flight up on Friday and a late evening flight back on Sunday. For comparison, main cabin would have cost 8250 Avios per person each way and we could have immediately upgraded to Main Cabin Extra. I figured I would splurge on First Class for the small difference in award pricing.

Our first class flight on Friday morning was fairly pleasant. I’ve compared AA short-haul first class to Delta before so I won’t review it again. Thanks to the temporary BA status, we also visited the Atlanta Admirals Club and the new DCA Concourse E Admirals Club. I’ll have reviews of those lounges coming up.

On Sunday, we decided to fly back early as it was 100 degrees in DC and we didn’t feel like visiting the Smithsonian museums again. We tried to stand-by on a 1:54pm flight (instead of the 8:15pm flight I had booked). Of course, we would have to give up our first class seats with this change in plans. In the end, thanks to my OneWorld Emerald status, we were #1 and #2 on the stand-by list, but it looked like there were going to be zero seats available. However, two people did not show up and we got the last two seats. Even though we were stuck in the back of a regional jet, we were glad to get home at a more reasonable hour and get out of the DC heat.

We had a nice visit with our daughter and her boyfriend. We stayed at the Park Hyatt DC again using Hyatt points as it was most convenient to where we wanted to be. We got upgraded to a junior suite thanks to my Globalist status and we had early check-in (10:30am) and late checkout (4pm – although we left early, our daughter was able to use the indoor pool that afternoon). I’ve reviewed both the junior suite and the park suite before so I won’t bore you with doing it again. It was a perfectly fine stay although the hotel is badly in need of some renovations.

Status matches can be useful, especially if you can take advantage of the temporary status and then extend it beyond the initial period. I hope to be able to do that with my BA status, but even if it expires, we at least got some benefit from the status this past weekend.

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