Originally Posted by
HarryKUK
As someone who has recently managed to book this successfully, the skepticism about whether it’s going to be a skipped leg or not is rather irrelevant. The carrier can’t make that determination.
A chart exists. A scale of Avios exists.
I fully intend to take all three of my flights, but yes I have chosen - not taken advantage of - but chosen a route and classes that I can afford in terms of both Avios and cash. And yes, it may be that the longest sector is in Y, but that is my decision to save me Avios and cash. It is not against any rules I’ve been made aware of, other than raising eyebrows about will I or won’t I fly all the sectors.
If BA want to make a better reward chard they are free to do so. For now, I am working with what I have.
Sure, a chart exists - but so do a series of rules for what is valid. The latter is not published AFAIK, and things like the supposed "most direct routing"/"there and back again" rules that we're told apply give pretty wide latitude for BA to reject an itinerary [even before we get to the question of whether BA are required to do business with someone]. OP's itinerary falls afoul of both looking very much like tacking on a long Y leg to save some Avios
and being a rather odd routing - giving the fares team more than enough excuse to say no. Presumably they either do want to fly SYD-SFO or could not find a single HKG-SFO Y seat, because there probably is a decent chance that the latter would have been ticketed even with the Y leg last. Filling in the gap might be another option [availability dependent] - we went to NZ with multi-day stopovers in Japan on the way there and Australia on the way home last year - hence my suggestion that the routing "limitation" is largely arbitrary.