Not sure if this is a simple question (sorry if it isn't). I was looking at routing options from Indianapolis to Shanghai on award ticket. I see that stopping over at Hawaii is ok and doesn't cost any additional mile. However, when I stop over at any airport in Europe such as Frankfurt, Paris or Copenhagen, I get an error msg saying "We were not able to find any available flights for award travel meeting your requirements." (it will let me pick the US->Europe flight, but after that is submitted then the error appears).
According to
this article (#7), "You can fly to Asia via Europe, but you need to stay within 15% of the Maximum Permitted Mileage on the route you are flying." Does this mean I have exceeded the MPM on this flight? I also tried IND->Europe->Dubai->PVG->IND to see if it makes any difference, same error.
I can think of several possible causes:
-Stopover at Europe is not allowed between US->Asia?
-It's allowed, but can only be booked over the phone?
-It's allowed and can be booked online, but this particular route exceeded the MPM?