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Old Aug 25, 2023 | 12:25 pm
  #10  
VFR
All eyes on you!
5 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: BOS
Programs: AA PL, B6 M1, DL GM, UA PS
Posts: 2,159
Originally Posted by Qwkynuf
This is interesting, but a couple of observations based on my recent domestic trip (this week).

PDX-ATL-GPT-ATL-PDX

Your tool calculates PDX-ATL at 2169 miles, but it has been 2172 for the eight years I have been flying it regularly. Small difference, but it could add up.

I *think* Sky Club access is only considering departure airport? The calculator claims that I won't have lounge access on GPT to ATL flight

The MQD calculation seems to be discarding decimal places when you enter the exact ticket cost. In my case, my ticket was $775.24 excluding taxes. If I enter whole numbers, $774 calculates 774 MQD. $775 also calculates 774 MQD. $776 correctly figures 776. Delta always rounds up. After some further playing around with it, it seems like you might be doing your rounding on the result of your calculations instead of on the input number. This is creating some really weird results.

For example, on my ticket, entering any price between 775.00 and 775.24 results in 774 MQD. Any price between 775.25 and 777.56 calculated 776 MQD.

This happens with other values, too. For example, entering a price between $98.80 and $101.11 comes up with $100 even

I think that if you rounded up first, and then just used that number for the MQD total you would be more accurate. When I have multiple segments and the MQD is an odd number, Delta seems to just subtract 1 or 2 MQD from one of the legs. I know it's extra math, but doesn't seem insurmountable.

Here are the actual earnings from this recent trip (I'm DM, so RDM is 11x):

PDX-ATL - 2172 MQM - $334 MQD - 3674 RDM
ATL-GPT - 500 MQM - $55 MQD - 605 RDM
GPT-ATL - 500 MQM - $55 MQD - 605 RDM
ATL-PDX - 2172 MQM - $332 MQD - 3652 RDM

Totals - 5344 MQM - $776 MQD - 8536 RDM

Hope some of that is helpful.

I used the GPS coordinates for each airport out of airports.json (a common reference file) and wrote a great circle length function. The numbers don't match DL or gcmap.com exactly because the airfield coordinates are slightly different, and my great circle length function might not be perfect either.

The reason it does not show a lounge for the GPT-ATL segment is because there is not a DL lounge in GPT... I used the departure airport for that segment to compute the lounge.

Hopefully with your data points I can fiddle with the MQD computation a bit to make it more exact... my goal was to be within a few dollars.
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