What we seem to have here is a failure to communicate. In the fourth message in this thread I stated -

You seemed to understand this and quoted this specific statement in the fifth message in this thread. However, as christep noted, your latest itinerary seems to ignore this advice. A round trip (e.g. HKG-ICN-HKG and LHR-DXB-LHR) is, at least, 2 segments. The same thing applies to your connection flights (e.g. SEA-ORD-LAX and STL-DFW-YVR).

Another way to look at a segment is that every time you get on and off one airplane that is a segment. Get on and off another airplane and it is another segment. Hope this helps clear up any confusion.

Thanks - it's more a difference of experience, interpretation & being divided by a common language

In the UK I've had one ticket issued or a ticket slip (my undertanding of your "coupon") for a return trip, even had a complete RTW trip counted as one segment !!

So I planned this trip accordingly e.g. LAX via ORD to JFK being one single flight irrespective of the number of planes !! Nice if were allowed

Anyway now I'm looking @ :-

Eur 1 CDG HEL
Eur 2 HEL LHR
Eur 3 LHR DXB
(this flight should take me to AA Gold)
Eur 4 DXB LHR
Interconti LHR LAX
(this flight should take me to AA PLT)
USA 1 LAX JFK
(the one trans-USA allowed)
USA 2 JFK ORD
USA 3 ORD MIA
USA 4 MIA DFW
USA 5 DFW YVR
Interconti YVR HKG
Asia 1 HKG DEL
Asia 2 DEL HKG
Asia 3 HKG SIN
Interconti SIN LHR

Still have yet to work out if the timetables match up to allow the trans USA flights to get done in the time available.

Have I got it now ?

ExMo - How many of these have you flown ?

asia is okay now.
there is some problem in europe, u have to start and end in cgd, and i am afraid u have to drop HEL.

for north america, u can fit in one more segment, and to get more mile u cd do jfk-hkg
(instead of yvr-hkg, though u plane will stop by yvr to refuel)

You can do this without dropping any of your European segments if you go back to HKG after SIN, thus using your fourth Asian segment, and then take the daily CX flight from HKG-CDG.

It looks like you have decided to do the AA Gold and Platinum challenges. Flying business, you should make PLT after the DXB-LHR segment. The challenges are based on Q-points, not flight miles. Traveling business class multiplies the actual flight miles by 1.25 to arrive at Q-points. CDG-HEL-LHR-DXB-LHR is a little over 9,000 miles and puts you over the 10,000 Q-points required for PLT. Congratulations!!!

The only in addition to these two comments is that you can only have two stopovers in Europe (where a stopover is defined as a gap between consecutive flights of 24 hrs or more). So you couldn't, for example, stopover in HEL and on both occasions in LHR. One of these would have to be a transit (i.e. less than 24 hrs).

Thanks Christep - the HEL stop will be for 3 hours to connect to the LHR flight. The +24hr stops will be between this flight and going to DXB, & then between DXB & LAX flights.

Thanks for this The turn around time in SIN to get back for the CDG flight is 1 hour 5 minutes & I'm not sure this is long enough even without luggage. I may have to change it to HKG-NRT-HKG instead.

I didn't know about the Q-Points and had been working on the miles. BA offer me 1180 points & 89274 miles, compared with EXP through AA & 104k miles !! Doing the challenge seems to pay off !!

I've changed the USA flights to maximise the miles:-

LAX ORD (overnight here)
ORD MIA
MIA JFK
JFK SEA (transcon one) (overnight here)
SEA DFW
DFW YVR

Additional Questions concerning Upgrade vouchers.

1. Will I earn these on this trip ?
2. If so can they be used from BC-F on non-AA flights ? If so then HKG-CDG would be great.
3. Are they electronic or paper ?
4. Can they be converted to AA miles ?

Thanks

IF you made EXP during this trip you would receive 8 VIPOW upgrade certificates. They are paper; can only be used on AA flights; and can no longer be converted to miles. However, once Gold, you will earn segment upgrades, at the rate of 4 per 10,000 flight miles (not Q-points) flown, and these could be converted to miles at the rate of 2,500 miles each.

Now for the bad news. Unless you have about 45,000 Q-points already you won't make EXP on this trip. This trip comes in around 45,000 miles. That's 56,000 Q-points. Still a long way from EXP. In actual miles in your AA account, however, you will end up around 93,000 as you will be getting a 100% bonus once you hit AAdvantage Platinum. Thus, if you turn the 12 (maybe 16) segment upgrades at the end of the trip you will have around 120,000-130,000 miles in your AA account.

ExMo - My AA mileage figure is slightly higher than yours (104k) based on BA EC Handbook & the AA reervation figures + Asia miles - I'm not sure AM are actual miles though. The Q-points (which I didn't know how to calculate) and the base miles are similar so I guess it's how I've calculated when I go to Gold and Platinum.

Still from standard to Platinum on one trip isn't bad & adding so many miles. I'll get to go into 2003 with the aim of doing this trip twice and ending up with EXP !!

Do your Q-points reset to 0 for each new membership year ?

Thanks to all for your help with this - we finally made it

i suppose you have friends to meet in SEA.

otherwise, if you switch SEA into YVR u will be able to fly CX on that segment, instead of teh mediocre AA product.

also, if you want more miles and have the time, the longest transpacific segment is jfk-hkg

For mileage calculations I'm using the great circle calculation at http://gc.kls2.com/ . This has proven to be pretty close to the actual mileage given by the airlines.

Q-points are easy to calculate as: flight miles * class of service multiplier. For business the class of service multiplier is 1.25. Thus, for 45,000 miles in business you'll get 56,250 Q-points.

Q-points and qualifying mileage resets to 0 on 1 January of each year. However, you will be PLT through February 2004 after your trip.

As pegasus8228 mentioned, you could pick up a few more miles by going DFW-JFK-HKG instead of DFW-YVR-HKG.

You've done a good job in maximizing miles for a 3 continent RTW. Be sure to let us know how it turns out.

I do have friends in SEA which is why I'm trying to get there and the flight times give me a lot longer overnight (14 hours) than YVR (6 hours). If the friends aren't in town then I'll re-look at YVR for the extra miles.

The trip is currently due to happen @ the end of October or start of Nov. Will post a trip report once it's done.

Thanks again to everyone

[This message has been edited by DP-UK (edited 09-02-2002).]