Continental Airlines is introducing a million miler program.

Lifetime status is one of those wonderful holy grails of loyalty programs, continue to strive to give loyalty to a single company over several years and be rewarded with a wonderful (to mix metaphors) brass ring at the other side of the rainbow.

American offers lifetime Gold at 1,000,000 miles and lifetime Platinum at 2,000,000 miles. The kicker here – and why American has the most generous million miler program – is that all miles earned in an account count towards this status, not just flown miles.

United offers lifetime Premier Executive (mid-tier) at 1,000,000 flown miles.

Delta offers lifetime Silver at 1,000,000, lifetime Gold at 2,000,000, and lifetime Platinum at 4,000,000. These are all airline miles, not any source miles a la American.

Continental’s new offering is interesting. It’s 1 million for Silver, 2 million for Gold, and 4 million for lifetime Platinum. It’s airline miles, but qualifying miles from any source count (so bonus qualifying miles for paid premium classes count, as would any bonus qualifying mile promotions). And perhaps most interesting a member with lifetime status can designate someone else to carry that same status as well … the designee will have the same status until the member proactively designates someone else.

Full details of the program are in this Flyertalk post by Scott O’Leary, Continental’s managing director of customer experience.