Drat. The Qantas schedule I have dated 29 Oct 2000 shows the flight number change as 29Nov, but doesn't indicate that the metal is anything other than their own. Oh well.

I haven't ticketed yet. I'm looking at leaving in Mid-May. One trick I learned tonight was that if you have a connection and not a stopover you only count the direct miles. So MIA-LHR-NBO (8643 miles) becomes MIA-NBO (7921 miles) and CAI-LHR-BOM (6666 miles) becomes CAI-BOM (2690 miles)

In theory this means from AKL-PPT (2583 miles)is possible for me with the routing AKL-LAX-SCL-IPC-PPT (19376 miles)

My reason for concern with minimizing miles instead of stretching them is that the AA award ticket is good for 35,000-50,000 miles. The rough route I have is at 43773 miles counted with 65803 actual miles. This is assuming the above AKL-PPT route.