Kenya Airways recently launched its own frequent flyer program called the “Asante” Rewards program after previously using Air France – KLM’s Flying Blue program. Now, the airline has launched a status match opportunity with most of the major frequent flyer programs.
Status Match to Kenya Airways Asante Rewards Elite Tiers
Kenya Airways has launched a wide-open status match opportunity for its Assante Rewards program. While the exact frequent flyer program that can be matched is not listed, it appears that most major loyalty programs such as the Air France – KLM’s Flying Blue, Delta SkyMiles, etc. can be matched.
In order to status match with the Asante Rewards:
- You must first register/make a new account for Kenya Airways Asante Rewards program here and choose the “full registration” option
- Once generating the account, you must send an email to asante@kenya-airways.com with a photo of your existing frequent flyer program card, your Asante Rewards account number and a brief description of why do you like to status match
- Status matched account will be valid for 12 months from the month of the matching
Based on multiple reports, the response from the contact support team will come within a few minutes up to hours depending on the traffic (I have received my response within 15 minutes).
Once receiving the status match initiation email, expect at least 72 hours for your account to be matched.
This is a unpublished status match so the opportunity window is pretty limited as we do not know when the airline will pull off the offer. However, this is a good opportunity to take part if you do not have SkyTeam’s elite tiers.
Is Kenya Airways Status Match Opportunity Worth it?
With the current status match offer, you are able to match up to Asante Rewards Platinum tier, which is equivalent to SkyTeam Elite Plus, which allows you lounge access, priority check-in, priority baggage, extra baggage allowance and many more. This is really valuable when flying on SkyTeam itineraries however, there is a catch.
While Kenya Airways is part of the SkyTeam alliance, there appear to be some issues for other partners to recognize its recently introduced Asante Rewards program. It appears that the new frequent flyer program is not fully integrated into SkyTeam’s system similar to what happened with the ITA Airways Volare program.
So it might take some time until the program is correctly showing up on the system when you are taking flights with SkyTeam partners while using the Asante Rewards for benefits.
Summary
Right now, the Kenya Airways Asante Rewards program is offering a wide available status match opportunity. With the status match, you can easily match to SkyTeam Elite or Elite Plus tier.
While Kenya Airways is a member of SkyTeam Alliance, the only problem is that the Asante Rewards program is not yet fully searchable on partner systems so there will be limited elie benefits offered when flying with SkyTeam partners for the time being.
It’s interesting that Kenya Airways has decided to create it’s own program instead of continuing to use Flying Blue. The decision was presumably taken due to increasing cost, and the potential for Asante Rewards to be more of a revenue earner for them. Only time will tell.
It’s taken up to a year for many SkyTeam airlines to integrate ITA’s Volare frequent flyer program, are we looking at similar timescales for Kenya Airways?
As of now, I believe it might take some time for other SkyTeam airlines to recognize Asante Rewards given that the slow integration process we have seen with ITA’s Volare program. But unlike ITA Airways which was rebranded after Alitalia collapsed, Kenya Airways is still operating and only the program was introduced so I don’t think it will take years.