Originally Posted by og
From my experience, DCIRC22 fare mileage was based on sectors. Eg SYD-AKL-LAX-DFW-YVR-HKG-SYD where AKL and LAX were transits (<24 hrs) but different days and flight numbers. This was important for the SCs.
You can even to the transit same day on same flight number. I did LHR-SIN-MEL on QF10 as two ticketed sectors and received 160+100 SC's. The TA was not willing to book it that way with the same day/same flight connection in SIN - she said she had to book the through flight. So I asked he to leave me in SIN overnight, connecting to QF10 SIN-MEL the next day. Then once the journey was commenced, I called QF and changed the date of my SIN-MEL and MEL-BNE flights to remove the overnight in SIN. There are generally ways around these things
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But when trying to get to PHL, BWI or JFK on a DCIR22, there are not many miles to play with, so breaking in AKL is unlikely to fit. Using NRT for the Asia transit instead of HKG opens up some more options, but HKG is prefered due to CX vs AA experience and the HKG lounge vs NRT lounge experience.