marlborobell

Part of the fare rules are the permissible routing. Generally speaking, the routing rules for a fare will determine what you can get away with. Most of the time, the routing rules will be the same whatever fare you buy in a market, but sometimes the cheaper fares will have a more restricted routing. (In fact, LAX-NYC is such a market on AA.)

But to give you an idea of routing rules, here are AA's regular LAX-NYC rules at time of posting (although often cheaper fares are routed nonstop only or one change at ORD, STL or DFW only):

So your options are: from LA, with an optional connection in one of San Jose, Las Vegas, Denver or San Francisco, to any one of the following: Northwest Arkansas, St. Louis and/or one of Nashville or DC in that order, Dallas and/or DC in that order, or Seattle and/or Chicago and/or DC in that order, finally arriving in New York.

Every flight segment you take must fit inside these rules, but the rules often give you some decent latitude. For instance, LA to Denver to Seattle to Chicago to DC to NY works if AA has nonstops on all those segments. As it turns out, AA does have several LA-Denver nonstops, and codeshares with Alaska on a bunch of Denver-Seattle nonstops. Then you just add Seattle to O'Hare to Reagan to LaGuardia, and bingo, you have 4712 miles one-way for the same fare as you might have paid for 2472. And of course you can omit any of the stops as you choose -- LA-Seattle-NY still gets you 3373 (and LA-Denver-Seattle-NY 4301)

Then it's just a matter of plugging availability into ExpertFlyer, etour or wherever, and seeing how much flight you can get for your fare.

International fares are another kettle of fish altogether. In general (although there are exceptions) international fares are based solely on a 'maximum permitted mileage' and you can connect through anywhere you like to do that -- in general you can even take whatever airline you like on the connecting legs (obviously you'll be taking the airline whose fare you're using on the main intercontinental leg). What's more, some airlines give you 'bonus' permitted miles through their hubs, which can increase your MPM just for transiting that hub. And you can often exceed the MPM and pay a percentage uplift. I'll leave the details of this to the experts -- I believe one poster here recently booked an international fare that was mistakenly priced at $0+tax and deliberately exceeded the MPM by a whole bunch, because any percentage of $0 is $0!

AAmyonlyway

Great job VPescado! Thanks for all your time and info!

IceTrojan

Hmm... well I tried my hand at a small MR, to see if I could even find it. AA.com has a special fare LAX > LAS for $89/rt. In booking it out, I could actually do LAX > SJC > LAS and back, which means 2000 miles base (500 mi minimum) + 1000 bonus for booking on AA.com = 3000 mi, which (ticketing being $108 after fees) = $.036/mi. How is that?

I haven't learned how to calculate EQMs yet

Also, is there usually another fee for calling the reservation number or booking at the airport counter? (I live 10 min from SNA).

VPescado

The bad news: 3.6 cpm redeemable and 5.4 cpm qualifying, is not particularly good as a MR.

The good news: I have seen worse first attempts. If you wanted to go to LAS cheaply anyway, you have done pretty well for boosting the mileage.

IceTrojan

OK, so I'm running into a little frustration doing an MR, so either I'm blind in one eye or it's not as easy as I thought. This is the process I'm going about it.. please let me know if I'm doing it right.

Let's say I want to go from LAX > PHL and found an AA fare in Q from LAX > PHL for $200. I also found a Q fare from LAX > MSP for $250. (Assume seats are available).

Does this mean that to build an MR on LAX > MSP > PHL for $200, I have to find an available Q fare from MSP to PHL?

And then to add more legs, I continue to add legs like this? Am I missing anything in this process?

VPescado

You are a tiny bit confused.

For LAX-MSP-PHL, once you have the LAX-PHL fare available, you do not need the other two fares.

Here is what you do need however:

1) The routing on the fare LAX-PHL to allow routing via MSP.

2) Flight segments that are not too far apart in time (so as not to trigger a stopover) that go LAX-MSP and MSP-PHL that have available inventory in Q (or whatever fare class you need for your fare).

This is why the three things that MR planners are always interesteed in are 1) cheap fares, 2) the routing rules for the fares, 3) the availability on segments along the routings.

IceTrojan

OK, so the fare rules from LAX>PHL say "TRANSFERS - UNLIMITED TRANSFERS AS PERMITTED ON THE ROUTING" as do the other legs. So as long as all the seats are Q and I'm not at an airport longer than 4 hours, that means I'm good to go?

IceTrojan

Also, there's a fare from LAX>LAS for $100 in the Q rate, and "unlimited transfers"... does that mean I could theoretically fly from LAX>JFK>LAS for $100, if I can find other seats in Q?

marlborobell

In short, no. What you're missing are the routing rules. Maybe you're looking at the fare on Travelocity or aa.com or somewhere else that does not specify the routing rules.

Go look at Expedia. Get most of the way through booking a ticket, then click 'rules and restrictions' -- then you'll see the complete details of the fare, including where you may connect through.

In this case, the routing is:

So no MSP, sorry. Your best bet for mucho miles on this is probably LAX-DEN-SEA-ORD-PHL. (I don't think there are LGA-PHL or BOS-PHL flights on AA any more )

IceTrojan

Oh wow... ok, another piece of the puzzle. This grasshopper is learning so much from this forum, esp this thread... thanks everyone!

As much as I hate expedia, I guess I'm stuck using it now.

ppisklak

Thanks so much, VP!

best

Superb thread. Thank you.

jcerovac

I am new to FT, though I am wishing I discovered this years ago!!!

This tutorial, as it were, is great! Thank you for putting in the effort, you've just answered about 5 questions I've been looking for answers to.

Happy Thanksgiving!

wheresdg

I agree, a very helpful forum for MR newbies - while I've done a few and have had some expert advice along the way, little refreshers are always good! Thanks ^

venkat

VPescado,

Wish I had read this thread before booking my recent MR. I think this thread belongs in the Hall of Fame for MRs. ^
...
venkat