Another elite status question for veteran FF's
 

I was just wondering if there was such a thing as flying intercontinental with 3-4 different stops. Could I fly from Phoenix to New York and back, stop three times (even if it means taking major detours) each way and earn 8-10 segments alone that count for elite status from that single RT ticket?

Anthony

Of course you can! My philosophy when flying (time permitting) is "A nonstop is the flight you take to your first connection city". http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

How would one go about planning such a trip. Does it need to be done by a travel agent. I do most of my purchasing on travelocity.com where I can look up fares on my own and plan a trip. I would love to hear about how people plan trips with multiple stops, this way my next flight can be the most outrageously inefficient one ever. Whoever said that non-stop is the best way to go must not have been a FF. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Anthony

The short answer:
- yes you can

The long answer:
- there are rules

The airlines have War & Peace on routing rules, so you have to fall within the "valid routing".

For example, American wanted to compete with Continental on Houston - Kansas City, a route I frequented in the 90's. As an AA flyer, I'd always use Chicago in the routing, sometimes going Houston - Dallas - Chicago - Kansas City, racking up tons of miles & flying their "then new" MD11 on Dallas - Chicago.

About 6 months after I started doing that regularly, they removed Chicago from the Housotn - KC routing. Was it me?

Anyway, "thems the rules". Check it out.

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- Bob

this is JUST THE KIND of thing that the "mileage Run" forum likes to chat about! I don;t know the ins and out esp since the spftware that United used ot have that made it easy to plan trips like this is now gone (sniff, sniff) but you might call upon some ot the folks who post in the "mileage Run" area to share tips and wisdom.

Bob,

How did you add Chicago in there when you flew? Did you just tell your travel agent or did you do the booking yourself? I would like to start adding more stops but need to know how. Also does a "segment" simply mean that you stop at the airport or do you need to change planes and have a different flight number. Stop vs connection. Thanks.

Anthony

Anthony, welcome to FT!

The general answer is that for trips from the US to Europe and Asia (you did mean intercontinental and not transcontinental, right) you can make a bunch of stops along the way as long as you don't change airlines, don't stay at any place more than 24 hours, and don't go too far off the straight line (there's a maximum distance for each airline for each route for each fare class)

So, for American from San Diego to Paris in mid-November, you currently get an allowance of 6884 miles, while the one-stop path via Dallas is only 6110. You can also switch airlines for one leg.

That means that it might be possible to do the following (I'm don't have the right computer access to check this, it's just theoretical... ): SAN-LAX-AUS-DFW-BDL-JFK-PWM-BOS-LHR-CDG, with the last leg on BA. You'd get about 9000 flight miles that way.

There are folks over in the Mileage Run forum that can come up with all sorts of interesting ways to make this work. The hard part is coordinating the schedules so that you don't spend too much time on the ground - you're probably looking at double red-eyes (west coast to midwest, east coast to Europe).

Forget Phoenix to New York, you can get 8 segments all over the place.

This was a legal routing on NW for $92 including taxes earlier this year:

MCI-MEM-CMH-DTW-IND-DTW-CMH-DTW-MCI

8 segments between two cities 450 miles apart!

not to forget the california run
ONT(or SNA/SAN/CLD)-LAx-SBA-SFO-SMF and return. can even be achieved in one day. check the fare rules on expedia. It will tell you under transfers-how many stops ou can make. then read the bottom of the rules to see where you could stop, and add that city via a multi-stop search

The advice of others here is good, beware the fare rules, that is what will make or break it. As a GENERAL guideline I'd summarize most rules by suggesting that as long as you don't go through the same city twice in one direction (there or back) and as long as you don't stop for more than four hours in any given city along the way you SHOULD be OK in most circumstances.

Recently I went from San Jose to Atlanta stopping first in Washington Dulles, then Providence, RI and then Chicago... also a San Jose to Dallas via Dulles, Atlanta and Chicago... big loops, MAJOR FF miles and a few extra segments, never the same city twice, never more than 4 hours... as to how...

I use the web sites and request multi city instead of "return/one way" options to tell it where I want to go... then I put in my expected cities (in this case starting with SJC to PVD, then connecting to ATL) avoiding hub cities for the airline in question (because I'll get routed through a hub)... and voila... $7.00 cheaper than the most direct flight from San Jose to Atlanta on my chosen airline, and trading the original 2435 miles for 4355 miles just to get there. Of course I had time to get there, so this worked.

Once again I need to emphaize, fare rules will vary drasticaly from airline to airline and ticket to ticket, my comment above was meant to give you a base idea of how it works and is not an actual statement of fare rules. Each time you go to book you need to look at the specifics of the ticket you are getting on the airline you are flying.

Thanks everyone for your input. You all have been more than helpful. I'm actually looking forward to planning a miles run. Kinda like taking a little field trip all across the US, especially if you do it all in one day.

Anthony

Sorry to drag out this thread more but how would I book a flight online with 4 stops each way. WHen I go under multiple destinations it only lets me input 4-5 destinations only, and that's including saving the last one to get home. I can get from Phx to New York in 4 stops but then I can't get home, and I'm sure it treats it like a one way fare. Any experienced people out there with online, multiple destinations booking?

Anthony

tvl4free is the expert on booking these itineraries and also on using Expedia to access fare rules that tell you which cities a potential booking might go through. Try this post:
www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum124/HTML/000027.html

One possibility if the software is one slot short of booking your desired route is to consolidate two segments into one request. For example, if I am going from Houston to Dallas to Oklahoma City using American, just input Houston to Oklahoma City (knowing that for that segment I will be routed through Dallas anyway).

One other nice thing about mileage run bookings is that you open yourself up for nice bumping opportunities. Since you have intentionally booked a "slow routing," going here and there, should you be offered a bump--take it. The best possible world would be to take a bump, and ask for miles for your original routing, then get rebooked on a different carrier (with which you also have a FF account)...that may even get you to your destination earlier than your original crazy routing!! Hasn't happened to me yet, but one of these days, it will!! The bump money may wind up funding your entire journey!

Everyone has told you about fare rules, but no one mentioned where to find them. You probably need to use both Travelocity and Expedia to get all the information you want, but what you can do is to select your origin and final destination then click on "rules". You can then get information about which routing segments are legal for that trip. That makes it easier when you start selcting your multi-cities itinerary.

At one time, a few years back, one way fares for many of the routes I was flying on United priced out at 50% the cost of a round trip fare. So, I was able log onto Travelocity and use one four flight "multi-segment" screen for my outbound flights, and another screen for my return flights. Was fun to try all sorts of city combos. That is how I orginally found out about the ten flight roundtrip itinerary, COS-SEA, that I have flown on several occasions.

So when one does get bumped and gets certificates for free travel, do those tickets get miles as well?

Anthony,

I can't speak for certificates. Whenever I have been bumped I have received vouchers, which can be applied toward tickets which do indeed receive miles. (Sometimes you will be offered a round trip certificate instead of a voucher but this has never happened to me, so can't say for sure...but vouchers are more common!)

When you combine the bump mentality and the mileage run mentality, it is a dangerous combination!! When you get ready to try a run be sure and post on the Mileage Run forum so we'll know what you are up to!

[This message has been edited by Watchful (edited 08-31-2001).]

I've received both types of TCV (transportation credit vouchers) from Northwest. The "free roundtrip ticket" type are inferior to the dollar-value type because the free ticket is booked in W class, which puts it on an equal footing with a minimum-miles award seat. There are no miles for that type of flight and they can be challenging to book, too. The dollar value vouchers can be used just like your own money against any fare you find with the carrier and in that case, you do get miles. I understand there is a third type which is simply a pile of miles, although I've never received one of those myself. Even that would be superior to having one year to book a W class ticket, provided the mile total is 25,000 or so. That's simply because banking the value takes the time limit off and your options for use are more flexible. On several occasions, we've received far more in voucher value than the cost of the tickets that we were flying on for taking a bump. The magnitude of the compensation varies by the situation and while you can hold out for more, the danger is that other passengers will scarf up the bumps at lower levels and you'll miss out entirely. Our best so far was $800 each on $329 tickets -- something that REALLY made our day. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif