Originally Posted by
wannagoexplore
From: Calgary, AB (YYC-Calgary Intl.)
To: Frankfurt, Germany (FRA-All Airports)
(and return)
Fare Basis Code: K0MSLXGT
K fares do not earn miles. What's worse,, if you cancel you seem to lose the whole value of the ticket. So K fares might not work for many people.
The problem is that these websites always give the cheapest available. You could call in to buy it, but they'll charge you a booking fee.
It seems like to get status miles on ac.com with this routing will costs one about $3500!
Well, no. There is an L fare for a few hundred more, but the website isn't showing it.
In this case you can apply
Zorn's Transformation (that I just invented and will be publishing in
Nature) to get the lowest fare that earns status miles.
It turns out the lowest status miles earning fare is L. It also turns out that fare is upgradeable using a SSWU. So, using AC.com, select the "Display only fares eligible for upgrade" option. It will prompt you for the certificate code. Enter the SSWU code, which is:
4000002
Then the lowest fare will be the L fare you desire.
The catch is that if it turns out YYC-YYZ-FRA is cheaper, you will be encountered with a big selection of every possible way of getting to YYZ before going on to FRA, pushing the non-stop YYC-FRA out of the picture.