Originally Posted by henry999
First of all, remember that the Great Circle mapper, as handy as it is, is really only a 'rough and ready' guide... You should download the *A Round the World Mileage Calculator, which will give you the offical *A distance for each sector.
Good point. I believe
mjgodden has kindly done that already, with the result of 29,012 miles. However, is that the definitive or 'official' Star mileage distance? Every agent and airline seems to have slightly differing calculations. Of course, their calculations may be worse for my purposes, rather than better...
Originally Posted by henry999
I was quoted 'Star2' for a plan of 29008 a couple of years ago. I don't know if it's possible for a human being to cut you any slack, or if it's all down to the computer.
Well, that's quite encouraging - at least an indication of *some* potential for a bit of slack in the system. I thought I had some vague memory of some leeway being allowed - 29,012 represents an excess of only 0.0414%!
Originally Posted by henry999
Are there no flights from western Canada to Cuba? If not YVR, check YYC.
I believe that (at least some of) the SYD-YVR flights are non-stop.
You're right at this time of year - there are both nonstop SYD-YVR and YVR-VRA flights, but come northern summer, which is the season I'd be flying (and is low season for both Canada-Australia and Canada-Cuba travel) both flights cease to exist.
Of course my problem is that I want to have my cake and eat it too (isn't that the spirit of FT?
) with the perfect routing, no inconvenient stopovers and maximum bonus miles!!!