Interesting to see this pop up -
Applied last year before a trip to South Africa where we had a couple of internal flights book through to SAA and was concerned there maybe issue with recognition of Velocity on internal domestic flights. *A Gold was handing on the CPT JNB sector as it was SAA metal, however annoyingly (but understandable) with SAA, you can't use *A Gold when booking direct with SAA but flights operated by SA Airlink.
Perhaps the worst bit of the lot - only reason I ended up using *A status was because they would not recognise my VA status and the extra baggage limit it came with. And to add insult to injury - missed out on 60 status points as a result.
Perhaps the best bit of the lot, whilst I've not looked lately in the App or online, but in my Apple Wallet it still shows the *A Gold status.