I too got the card last month. I'm a sole trader with a good income. I almost didn't go through with the application process. they were so fussy. A year of bank statements with regular incoming income was not enough. (I haven't yet done 2021-2022 Tax return). I needed a letter from my accountant! He'd never seen anything like it.
Unfortunately I reached the $4000 pretty quickly, still in 2022, but the letter I received about qualifying for Gold says I need to select my status arline in early Jan. I'm choosing Air Canada, since the program is widely praised, has good and unusual non-alliance partners and has reasonable reward tickets and I'm already *AGold with SQ. (achieved through buying points last year in the generous offer which has now ceased) Air Canada seems to have the most generous status allocation being the rest of the calendar year AND the next... I'm hoping that the date will start from when the status is granted, not when the spend was attained (as per the fine print mentioned above somewhere), but I'll let you know.
Any update on Aeroplan gold?
So, to recap - got the card (eventually) in early December. Crossed the $4000 threshold in late Dec. I think the email was Dec 30th..
asking me to choose my status arline by Jan 15th. I went with Air Canada for the reasons above.
On that day (Nth American time) I got the email from Star Alliance saying that AC had confirmed my Gold status. (Air Canada calls it "50K". It's not their highest tier - actually it's TWO below their highest tier, but it
is the equivalent of Star Alliance Gold)
Most importantly - the expiry date is
31st Dec 2024. It was kind of tricky to find the expriry date. you have to click somewhere on the app in a place which doesn't really look like a hyperlink, but when you click it, it reveals a bit of extra info, including the expiry date.
So
the main point is, the status clock starts in the year the Gold status is processed, NOT when you achieve the spend, or when you got the card. (for Air Canada at least). My fear was that I'd get the rest of 2022 (ie, one day) + the following year. Instead I got almost all of 2023, plus all of 2024.
Has anyone confirmed whether you need to have your AC flight number associated with a Vigin booking to get the Gold benefits? Or is simply having the status enough if you can show it?