Originally Posted by
ywgckp
When I looked earlier today, AC.com was pricing 7k-ish for YWG-YYZ-AUH-MLE in J. I could get YWG-YYZ-DXB for around 2k in latitude, upgrade it instantly, keep it refundable, and then book onwards from AUH-MLE for another 2k, but that wouldn't get me SQD for the second leg...
A couple of thoughts.
If you ask AC to price that, they may not be able to get the $2K EY AUH-MLE fare. Airlines don't always make their best fares available for booking by partners, or it may interact in some screwy way with the YWG-DXB fare. So even if AC is willing to book this for you, don't expect them to quote you $4K; it could easily be far more.
Second, you won't earn any SQD (or SQM or SQS) on flights with QR or EY. You
might earn a few extra SQD total, but it depends on how AC would allocate the dollars. If they segregate the ineligible EY/QR flights since they're a separate fare, you'll earn nothing extra.
If they lump all the dollars together and then divide across the entire booking, you'll come out slightly ahead - you will have roughly doubled the price, but only added ~25% to the mileage, so even though the EY/QR flights will earn nothing, your SQD will be a bit higher on the AC flights. But you're not going to get the full SQD benefit because those EY/QR flights will be ineligible.
My gut says they'd probably take the latter approach, but I've also never bought a ticket with two separate fares, one of which from a non-*A carrier, so can't say for sure how they'd do it.
In any case, I suspect you'd find they'd want to charge you more than $2K to add the MLE leg, and you'll be better off to just book this as two separate tickets, or buy it as one itinerary from EY or QR. Remember that if you fly AC metal, even if it's ticketed by someone else, you'll earn SQD on the AC metal legs. That might be harder to do with EY, since AC doesn't fly to AUH, but QR might sell you a nicely priced YWG-YYZ-DOH (stop)-MLE round trip all in J on which ~80% of your ticket price should count for SQD (since AC metal would be ~80% of the mileage).
Originally Posted by
jmoorfoot
No. I have an award booking on 014 stock MAN xAUH - MEL entirely on EY, redeemed on the website.
Revenue and reward tickets are entirely different though. AC would not sell you that as a cash fare, neither on the website nor by phone. For revenue tickets, there generally has to be at least one AC marketed flight on the itinerary. That doesn't have to mean AC metal, but at least an AC codeshare. And even that's not necessarily enough.