Resource for accurately determining miles per route?
 

Hi there,

AC used to have a wee book that listed the number of miles per route. I haven't seen that book in ages. I used to use Expedia to try to determine the number of miles per route but just had a look on their site for the number of miles to Korea and noticed that they listed YYZ to YVR as just over 2100 miles, whereas AC credits you with just over 4100 miles in economy class. Does anyone have any good source of mileage information to help calculate the number of AP miles flown?

Cheers,
PS

Great Circle Mapper is quite close to the actual mileage flown.

Also this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...ings-list.html

MileCalc is also great. Lots of customization and a CPM calculator. Results are as accurate as the Great Circle Mapper and AP, whit in 50 miles.

http://www.webflyer.com/travel/mileage_calculator/

Usually very accurate.

Air Canada lists route distances in their published timetable.

However when they credit you Aeroplan miles they fraudulently shave a fraction of the published distance. I believe it was a covert cost-cutting measure many years back which has been perpetuated year after year.

This is not a disagreement between two companies using two different methods. It is Air Canada disagreeing with Air Canada. The distance published in the timetable is essentially correct. The distance credited is consistently and intentionally less. The method they use for points is, I believe, to shave whatever they think they can get away with.

Why not shave the miles in the timetable you might wonder? Indeed, why publish a number in the timetable at all, unless it is to tell people how much mileage credit they will get?

Anyhow, if you need to know how much they are going to defraud you, check the thread where people post how much they actually got.

487143-official-aeroplan-status-miles-city-flight-pairings-list.html

Of course, there's no guarantee they won't change the distance again next time they want to take out some cost.

I am sure the evidence which would come out in a class-action lawsuit would be rather embarassing. The mileage AC has stolen, even over millions of flights, is modest. But the devious scheming to save a few bucks sure looks like fraud worthy of punitive damages.

-C

If you mean the timetable, they still do.

No, the credited mileage for YYZ-YVR is 2078 miles. Maybe you're thinking round-trip?

Others have posted useful links. Really, I wouldn't worry about the exact number of miles credited; it's almost always within 10 of the actual distance (calculated by most of the online tools), and therefore unlikely to make a difference to getting status, etc..

Being a KVS Tool member, you can use the new Ticketed Point Mileage function:

[KVS Availability Tool 5.6.0/Diamond - Reference: Ticketed Point Mileage [TPM]: YYZ-YVR-YYZ]

KVS, any plans for a native Mac port? I'd come back to you but I want a seamless experience and don't wanna bother with Parallels.

Star Alliance Flight Search Tool at http://www.staralliance.com also shows milage between city pairs but is inaccurate when connections are involved (i.e. 500 point minimums)...

The general consensus among our Mac users (of which there are quite a few) is that it is well-worth installing Parallels just for the KVS Tool alone ;)

Have you called the police ?

Except when the published distance is less than the credited Q mileage....I fly YQB-YUL segments every trip and get 500 Q on that leg...yet the timetable shows something like 145 miles...have you called in lately to ask AC/AE to ding you for miles that you didn't really fly ?

Time to call the cops ?

:rolleyes:

Can you give us some examples of routes for which you suspect they do this? We can easily check with the available tools and see if this is true. I just flew YYZ-FRA and it was credited exactly the same as the actual distance.

Not sure that I buy the conspiracy theory as I don't have any before and after data of when this supposed shaving took place. However, I can confirm that the assertion that pretty much every routing credit is short of the advertised distances. Although it is very small on YYZ-FRA you were actually short changes.

YYZ-FRA as shown from Expedia: 3953
YYZ-FRA from milecalc: 3952
YYZ-FRA from AC published time table: 3946
YYZ-FRA actual miles credited by AE: 3941

So according to AC's own timetable it you were short changed five miles, not the end of the world but certainly saves Air Canada a few cents per flight. I'm personally not aware of a single flight that actually matches the timetable, but would be interested to be proven wrong.

Does anyone have any data on many UA/CO miles you'd get for this same route or another comparison?

Short changed from the published distance, perhaps, but it looks like those published distances are wrong. The point-to-point distance from airport to airport is 3940 miles.

It would be interesting to see how each source calculates those distances - it wouldn't surprise me to see that some calculate city-to-city instead of airport-to-airport.