Originally posted by BlondeBomber:
For this routing you can probably get a 700 GBP fare (LHR-LAX-SYD) on NZ in econo and earn a whack of miles. Do 2 and half of these and you could be UA 1K with 6 system wide upgrades.
My calculation indicates that a LHR-LAX-SYD-LAX-LHR would earn 25886 miles. Therefore, one would have to do four of these to get 1K.