Ahh... good point. I never think of Australia, as from where I live the best option by far is Emirates via Dubai. What I was thinking of is that a flight in paid business class from Toronto to Frankfurt costs a minimum of over 5K CAD R/T, and earns 3941 plus 985 bonus status miles each way for a total of 9852 status miles RT. At this rate, to earn SE, you would need ten trips plus one local trip to earn SE, with a minimum spend in excess of 50K and some fairly heavy duty hours on the plane. I guess the Australia example is the "easy way", but also it is not that fun of a trip, and I for one would probably not go the AC route to Australia if I was a frequent traveller on this run from CDA...