Originally Posted by
pinniped
Is this true on all legacies? A regular connection increments your EQS counter? It's been years since I paid attention to segments but back in my AA Plat days I didn't think connections incremented your counter. MCI-LGA nonstop counted the same as MCI-ORD-LGA, regardless of whether a different physical plane or different flight number was used for the two segments.
I don't personally know about
all legacies, but you mentioned AA. It's also on AA that I qualify, and for this year right now My AAdvantage Account "current" summary says:
YTD Elite Qualifying Segments 20
And I can calculate a count of 20 only by counting every single leg as 1 segment. For example, I have to count the LAX-DFW-SAT and LAX-DFW-LBB flights I flew as 2 segments in each direction to get the 20 count that AA shows me (as the EQS counter).
Now, I do presume that if these two legs had been the same flight number, then they might have counted as only one segment. But since I was participating in the DEQ11 promo which required LAX-DFW (or LAX-ORD) to post as a separate segment (in order to do double EQM), I made sure I never took any connections which were the same flight number! (Same-flight number connections, furthermore, only earn miles based on the original origin airport distance to the final airport distance, even if you change directions radically at the connection point. So even without promos I tend to avoid them!)
(Now, whether that was idfferent years ago, I don't know. I've never qualified by segments, so I've not paid attention before.)