Originally Posted by
cperciva
As I was checking in for my YVR-YYZ-IST-MUC-SOF travel yesterday, the desk agent looked at my itinerary and said "this is a joke, right?"
Given the mileage running I hear about people doing, I'm sure this is far from the craziest itinerary flyertalkers have flown -- which makes me wonder, how crazy *have* we collectively gotten?
I'm talking about routings to get somewhere you want to go, not just flying around in circles, so I'm not looking for EYW stories here.
Looking at your itinerary again, there really is nothing that crazy about it. The only seemingly superfluous stop is MUC... one would think you could get from IST-SOF without a connection. Otherwise though, having to stop in YYZ to get to Europe from YVR is fairly normal and then having to stop at a European hub to get to the smaller airport (SOF) is also normal.
I've only made a couple 3-cnx flights in my life and both were to ZA: YEG-LHR-MUC-JNB-DUR, and YEG-LHR-ZRH-JNB-DUR
EDIT, forgot that I think once i had to do something like HNL-SFO-ORD-IAD-LHR... but it wasn't to do with earning points, its just what my cheap ticket put me on.