In regards to SC's for QFF members, I guess the key things to keep in mind is that domestic flights within Australia, WT+ flights between Australia and the intra-European flights are the ones that will be most beneficial, as they will all get full economy SC's (B class Aus domestic on QF, W Class for WT+ flights on BA, and Y class for flights intra-Europe on BA/IB/AY/EI).

So basically you'd be wanting to take BA flights from SYD - LHR via SIN or BKK, or MEL - LHR via SIN. Within the MPM you could add in whatever additional flights you wanted within Australia, and connecting up to allowed flights within Europe as well.

Just as an example, something like SYD-CBR-MEL-SIN-LHR-FRA and return would get 400 SC's, and that only covers 22,700 miles - so there'd certainly be more to play around with miles wise and with extra segments as well. Should be easy enough to top 500 SC's all up, and no doubt some clever folks could push towards 600 SC's I'd guess.

And actually not that bad for AA either as B class on QF and W on BA both earn 1.5 qPoints per mile......
Just buy your USA flights on AA far enough in advance to get reasonable fares. I would hope that B class seats were a whole lot more available on QF than the L class of the xONEx.

Questions:
It seems that surface sectors of less than 24 hours are not a stopover. Do the surface sector miles count against the MPM limits?
How would the out-bound routing affect the MPM? It was noted that the MPM Oz-LHR was greater via the USA than SEAsia. ie which way do you need to go to get the higher MPM.
Has anyone verified that the 5% incremental charge for exceeding the MPM would be premitted?

Thanks

WWF

If one was making trips to chase SCs primarily, FF points as bonus, all with QF in my case, which of these two would be more economical to achieve 420 SCs I need to maintain my gold status:

Multiple trips on LAN, syd-akl, business class @ fare AUD679++.
On WT+ on offer in this thread, @ fare AUD3,449++
This is the applicable fare to Cologne, travel in Oct 05.

I would'nt mind going SYD-CNS-MEL then to either BKK or SIN to LHR and CGN. Eager to read suggestions. Return via the USA or JNB or EZEor back thru ASIA (BOM-HKG etc).

f

Well three return trips SYD-AKL in Business class would get you 480SC's for just over $2000+taxes. So it's a significantly cheaper option if you *only* care about renewing Gold status. The downside of the SYD-AKL option is you have to keep in mind you'll be waiting around in AKL as well for the next LAN flight to come through to get you home (doing AKL-SYD runs works much better timing wise).

Just re-opening this thread to find out whether anyone has travelled using this fare and what kinds of routings have been allowed? It really does look like a brilliant fare .. you use WT+ for Australia-Europe-USA and QF points for USA-Australia and intra-Australian upgrades to J. And full Y SC earning!

Remember that non WTP BA sectors except on SYD/MEL-BKK/SIN-LHR sectors only earn 25% miles, so where possible, I would be going WTP on BA.

According to the fare rules document, QF flights are booked into B and BA/IB/AY/EI European flights are booked into Y so you're earning full miles and SCs all the way, plus the BA/QF mileage bonuses.

QF B fares only earn full Y SCs on domestic flights. For internationals it is the discounted rate. At least there will be heaps of availability and it is upgradable.

Ah yes, that's a bit of a shame but as you say it's still upgradeable. I wonder what availability is like on BA in W. I phoned up bestflights to ask about the fare, their take on it seemed to be that you were allowed four online transfers either side of the turnaround point but that stopovers cannot be additional to these transfer points - so in essence, a maximum of 10 segments is allowed. Currently I am looking at doing:

SYD-PER-xHKG-xLHR-HEL-TXL//MAN-xMAD-VLC-xLHR-LAX-SYD

which I hope will fall within the allowed mileage.