Last year, I made several trips within Asia involving five flights for each round trip so that I could get to where I was going on the days I needed to using my air miles. On other trips, when I flew directly I'd go economy class as most flights within Asia1 are not much longer than coast-to-coasters back home, but for anything more than two flights on a round trip from Tokyo I went in Business. *A has at least 4 good carriers in Asia and it's possible to use three other ones too.
Then I became curious about what the rules were. I learned what the on MPM the routes I wanted was, about the inability to make a stop-over within the same region, and how “stops” of 23:59 or less were valid routings. But once I learned that the maximum was 10 flights, I decided to try and create the longest trip possible. Could I plan a 10 flight trip within Asia under the MPM and get it approved? This took a long time, and required hours of careful study and experimenting with flight routes on All Nippon Airways, Asiana, Air China, Thai Airways, and Singapore Airlines. Funny, but I never once studied flights using United. Go figure.
I found that due to the geography many Asian flight routes overfly other *A cities along the way . This made it easy to find stops that were not more than 5% over the limit even using the furthest possible destinations. Soon, the plan evolved into trying to make a 'city tour' with every stop along my route as close to just under 24hrs. as possible, which wasn't that hard. Even a chance to revisit places like Taipei I'd not been to in years, and maybe see Beijing on an overnight.
Later I reasoned that if I was gonna fly this many trips, and since it's only 10,000 more miles for Business class, I ought to plan to get a nice meal each flight too, especially on SQ, TG, ANA & OZ. I made sure none were early morning or mid-afternoon, which provide only a breakfast or a snack. I worked that into the schedule, so all flights are full meals, except for one 2 hr. trip btw. SHA & CAN but it's on Air China so I'm not missing much. Last year on a CA flight to PVG I was the only one in Business class, so after dinner I asked them if they had anything else from the menu. The flight attendant returned with three crew meals.
At first, I started trying to do this trip from NRT and via Beijing, because it's one of the few Asian cities I'd never been to. I could have had 4 flights in an almost perfectly straight line to PEK via NGO that included “stops“ in Seoul and Dalian. The first leg from Narita was to be on a Dash-8, which would have been pretty unusual because all you usually see there are wide-bodies. There was a historic old hotel from the 30's in Dalian I wanted to see & stay at, but using PEK to go to SIN was over the miles. It would have required only 46 additional miles, as they are overflown on the way.
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=PEK-DLC...=outline&DU=mi
After several faxes to and from the local Air Canada office, I had the following result. It's ten flights for 30,000 air miles or 3,000 miles for each leg, all but one on wide-bodies. I'll use only nine flights on the actual trip. Ten meant taking Air China from PVG instead of ANA (who would?). Also there are no Business class rewards seats on ANA domestic, or I could have gone HND-KIX-FUK-PVG for 10 using a second domestic flight in economy within Japan, which is just not worth it.
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=HND-KIX...=outline&DU=mi
By the time it was all worked out, there wasn't enough lead-time on some of the essential SQ and TG segments when I was next free to travel at the end of ther year, so I booked a six trip route using the brand new Haneda International Terminal a short distance from my home. If you live by the western Tokyo border, it's an awfully long way to Narita. I got an Open Jaw HND-BKK-SIN; UTH-BKK-PEK-KIX-HND. It includes >24hr. stops in Bangkok and Beijing on the way back. That was nice because I'd been told PEK was impossible to include on the longest possible trip due to mileage restrictions, and I can have the ½ body massage in the Royal Orchid Spa at BKK as the departing flight is on Thai.
It's a kind of poor-man's mini-RTW. Reading all the threads on this topic inspired me to see what I could do locally. One trick learned from Flyertalk was looking for flights with single flight numbers and a stop en route without accruing any more miles flown. Thai does this on two Seoul routes through Hong Kong and Taipei so it's part of the plan. I'd prefer HKG as I've done the other already and the last time I landed there it was at Kai Tak!
Here's how it worked out as approved:
HND-KIX-PVG; SHA-CAN-SIN or
HND-KIX-PVG-TPE-SIN
and back from
CNX-BKK-ICN-KIX-HND via HKG or TPE.
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=HND-KIX...LAO&PW=2&DU=mi
I could have flown a little further by coming back from CEI, but there are so many choices and routes for flights between Singapore and Chiang Mai that this made more sense. Besides, I've never been to Chang Mai either, so in the end I can get to visit 8 Asian cities for 30,000 Aeroplan miles or 3333 miles per flight segment. The mileage total is 6950, with a total of up to 7181 actual miles flown if through Taipei on the way back. Seems like I'll need a long booking window for this one. Perhaps a trip report's a good idea once I finally make the trip.
Hope this helps with your reward flying in Asia.