Originally Posted by SchmeckFlyer
I thought one could fly from North America to the Asia Pacific region via Asia, as long as one is only in transit, and not making a proper stopover (which for BA means longer than 24 hours). That would not count as a stopover, so would not add a 5th continent, or have I read it wrong?
Yes. The rule allows for transits, but any continent you touch will count towards the total number of continents visited. The way around it is to do take the QF flight from JFK or LAX, or fly AA to HNL and then take QF onwards to SYD. Of course, you'll miss out on the CX experience, but since you're not planning any further Asia trips, it'll represent a worthwhile savings to omit it.
Update:
Well, I was pretty certain that that was the rule, but I decided to re-read the star file, and now I can't find where it says what I said it said.
Here's what I can find:
Code:
22N . 3. 1 INTERCONTINENTAL DEPARTURE AND 1
23N . . INTERCONTINENTAL ARRIVAL PERMITTED IN EACH
24N . CONTINENT EXCEPT AS FOLLOWS:
25N .
26N EXCEPTIONS:
27N .
28N .
29N . A. 2 PERMITTED IN NORTH AMERICA. 1 MUST BE A
30N . TRANSIT WITHOUT STOPOVER BETWEEN SOUTH
31N . AMERICA AND ANOTHER CONTINENT.
32N .
33N . B. 2 PERMITTED IN ASIA, 1 MUST BE A TRANSIT
34N . WITHOUT STOPOVER OR ON DIRECT SINGLE PLANE
35N . SERVICE BETWEEN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AND
36N . EUROPE.
56N . 5. TRAVEL BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND EUROPE ON A
57N . SINGLE FLIGHT NUMBER OR AS A SURFACE SEGMENT
58N . IS CONSIDERED TRAVEL THROUGH 3 CONTINENTS.
59N . SOUTHWEST PACIFIC-ASIA-EUROPE.
It only explicitly applies the rule to the Europe to SWP routes, not the other ones. However, the wording of exception B does seem to imply that you are stopping over in Asia, which will still add to the continent count. I guess point 5 is there to avoid using the single flight number excuse to avoid counting Asia as a continent. If you do JFK-HKG-SYD, you have two flight numbers, making the transit in Asia more explicit.