Originally Posted by
fzwinter
When you factor in the time between flights, you may be much better off taking a transcon MR. I think more consideration should be given to the concept of "EQMs per hour spent".
UA has also become much more restrictive as to routing options for cheap fares than it used to. I can recall a few SMF-SFO-LAX-SAN and OXR-LAX-SFO-SMF itineraries that don't ever seem to be bookable in L or K anymore.
+1. If you're going for EQMs it might be much easier (fewer trips total) to do transcons. If you really want to hit all those airports, its doable to do sna-phl-smf-phl-sna in a weekend for 10k+ miles routing through lax/sfo/iah/ewr. Sna/smf/san/cld tend to go on sale together every month or so, and its easy to get the cost down to <4cpm