Calculating oneworld award mileage & segments
 

I understand miles are calculated from stopover-to-stopover even if you make many connections, but I'm wondering if there is no nonstop offered between stopover points, do they calculate miles as if there were a nonstop, as if you took the shortest connecting route, or based on the route you actually took? For example, I fly CHC-CNS by going CHC-AKL-MEL-CNS. Is that calculated as 2410 (nonstop), 2520 (CHC-SYD-CNS) or 3543 (CHC-AKL-MEL-CNS) miles? If the shortest connecting route is used, I assume it is the shortest route that can be used on oneworld carriers (e.g. CHC-BRE-CNC using non-oneworld code share is 2414 miles but have to go with 2520 miles for CHC-SYD-CNS using oneworld)?

Also, in the above example, am I right that oneworld’s segment calculation does include connecting flights on your actual route, so that my CHC-AKL-MEL-CNS flight would count as 3 segments even though the shorter route of CHC-SYD-CNS would only count as 2 segments?

The calculation is from stopover to stopover, regardless of routing.

Recently I flew NRT-LHR-JNB-NBO without stopping as part of a OneWorld award, and the only miles that counted towards the total were the Narita to Nairobi great circle distance. If you stop for more than 24 hours, then the stopover pointed enters the calculation.

These really are a VERY flexible product.

Did they count your NRT-LHR-JNB-NBO trip as 3 segments? Or was this before the 16 segment limit was put in place in which case it was a nonissue?

I was way under 16 segments, so can't answer on how they count segments towards a max - probably by the segments you actually fly, so every connection counts unless it is "hidden" on a single flight number from A to C with stopover at B.

I presume Jerry is right since the point of the rule, AFAIK, is to allow electronic ticketing, and electronic tickets are apparently limited to 16 segments. (My guess therefore is that even open jaws or ground segments count as segments - any time they have to enter a new city in your ticket after the first counts as one, so what I understand the rule to be might be clearer expressed as 'you can have no more than 17 airport codes, counting repeated visits to the same city separately, showing up in your ticket'). I do not know this for sure but this is how I understood the rule.

IIRC, there was some discussion in the earlier thread of whether the OWE products would follow suit, but somebody posted that QF/BA/... had managed to persuade AA it wasn't a good idea.