Originally Posted by
highlandguy
I would be grateful if anyone could offer some suggestions/help.
I am looking at going to Alaska for summer holidays and have been looking at Business flights ex DUB flights. I can book DUB-LHR-SEA-ANC-SEA-LHR-DUB for £1,272 leaving Friday 22 July returning Friday, 12 Aug.
I have been trying to add an extra leg LHR-eastern seaboard-SEA to try and increase the tier points on the trip but everytime I try the flight goes up over £6k. Is there anyway I could increase tier points on this trip for similar cost to what I have currently?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
You are blowing the maximum permitted mileage (MPM) for the fare by adding an extra stop. If you look at fare construction for DUB-LHR-SEA-ANC, maximum permitted mileage is already too large, but by less than 15%, so you can still get the discount fare with a surcharge. Maximum permitted mileage can be exceeded by 25% at most, if it's more than that then the discount fare no longer applies and you will get quoted ridiculous amounts because the trip is now constructed as two different fares, and fares which allow end-to-end combination are generally expensive.
The rules for the construction of discount fare are:
/VIA THE ATLANTIC/ MPM 5266
MILEAGE SYSTEM APPLIES BETWEEN ORIGIN AND DESTINATION
MILEAGE SYSTEM APPLIES ORIGIN TO DESTINATION
TICKETED POINT DEDUCTION OF 705 MILES APPLIES
WHEN TRAVEL IS VIA SUB AREA 21
TICKETED POINT DEDUCTION OF 550 MILES APPLIES
WHEN TRAVEL IS VIA DFW OR CHI OR MIA OR NYC OR
RDU
SPECIFIED ROUTING PERMITTED AS FOLLOWS
DUB-NYC-SEA-ANC
ROUTING VALID PROVIDED NO STOPOVER ENROUTE
"SUB AREA 21" appears to be roughly equivalent to "Europe", but I have no idea whether multiple listed deductions may be applied to the itinerary. In case of DUB-LHR-SEA-ANC gcmap.com produces the distance of 6528 miles, which exceeds the MPM by almost 24%, but since fare construction only shows 15M, you are probably getting the 705 miles deduction for traveling via LHR.
HTH.