New China Airlines (Skyteam Elite Plus) status match opportunity

I've been following a particular pattern on Statusmatcher and the one from China Airlines has perked my interest.

Though smaller in revenue size than its Star Alliance competitor EVA Air, China Airlines is (rather confusingly) Taiwan's national carrier.

Currently they are offering Emerald status, which is equivalent to Skyteam Elite Plus. To earn this through flying would normally take either 30 sectors in First or Business Class, or 70 000 miles after factoring in their incredibly stingy accrual rates (so deep discount economy tickets in L, X, G,S classes on China Airlines flights earn zero mileage, meaning you'll be trying forever!).

Don't forget that Skyteam's lounge policy is more restrictive than both Oneworld and Star Alliance. In order to access a Skyteam-operated lounge your next flight — or the one you have just taken —  needs to be an international segment. This isn't so much a problem around Europe as the countries are all small and only have one or two hubs. It does however become a problem very large countries such as USA, Russia and Argentina where you might have multiple domestic sectors and you will be denied lounge access because of the international requirement.

As usual, you will need to provide details of the airline and programme you are matching from, your account number and a screenshot of your activity page. To initiate the process, send an email to ndfp@china-airlines.com who should match your status for one year according to this successful report.

At the moment it looks clear that they will only award Emerald to Star Alliance Gold holders. Almost certainly they will match OneWorld Emerald, but I don't see any reports either way for OneWorld Sapphire (I'm guessing “no”) or other Skyteam programmes (I'm guessing “yes”).

This is a perfect opportunity to renew your Skyteam Elite Plus for another year, given Flying Blue's misguided campaign this time last year. Since I have no plans to flying Skyteam for at least a few months I'll hold off matching for a while.

(Interesting fact: I was offered a part-time job to manage China Airline's Facebook Page in December 2012! I accepted it though the position got withdrawn before I even started.)