DONE to the Max: Creative ideas needed
 

Fellow Flyertalker! I find my self in need to be at the receiving end of the collective and individual knowledge of this forum.

Prologue: I planned two DONE4s for this year. The goal was to attend business meetings and to reach Qantas Lifetime Gold status on the way. Everything was nicely planned and so I started on my first DONE4. Hawaii, Los Angeles, London, Beijing, Tokyo, a beautiful collection of cities and earning enough Status Credits (SCs) to get me to lifetime gold after completing my second DONE4.
Everything would have worked nicely, wouldn't it have been for an AA MD80 which went technical on me at DFW. Because of this I missed two flights and I find myself now 220SCs short of reaching my goal if I would do my second DONE4 as planned.

For those of you not familiar with the QF FFP. Rather than EQM, QF uses status credits to determine your FF status. The number of SCs depends on the class you fly and on a range of distance in which the oneway flight falls. In the table below, a flight from JFK to DFW would give you 120 SCs because it books into A and because it is more than 1200 miles.

Table: QF SCs for bookings in D and A.

Distance D A
1 0-600 40 60
2 601-1,200 60 90
3 1,201-2,400 80 120
4 2,401-3,600 100 150
5 3,601-4,800 120 180
6 4,801-5,800 140 210
7 5,801-7,000 160 240
8 7,001-8,400 180 270

My current DONE4 goes like this:

SYD-HKG-BOM-HKG-CMB-HKG-JFK-DFW-LAX-DFW-ANC-DFW-LAX-LHR-LIS-LHR-HAM-LHR-HKG-SYD

This would give me 2100 SCs which now leaves me 220 SCs short of my goal.
The question to this esteemed forum is:

How can I get the required number of SCs (2320) out of this trip.

I must go to LAX, LIS and HAM on business. I am however willing to make HAM and possibly LIS sidetrips which I will book with points. So obviously I can then go LHR-MCT-LHR instead of LHR-HAM-LHR. This give me an extra 120 SCs, so just 100 more to go. Any ideas?

You have a spare segment... how about HKG-AKL-SYD at the end?

Never mind the entire thread. Kiwi, just delete the entire thing. I should be shot. I am working on this for days and Viajero just looks at it for 2 seconds and tells me I have not used up all my segments.
I will just go and cry now.
Viajero, thanks! How embarrassing. Thanks for teaching me how to count. Mrs. DUF will be happy that I will not spend any more time on this.

Last year AA had a MIA-ANC flight (one flight number even though there was a plane change in DFW). If there is one again this year then you could do LAX-MIA-ANC-DFW (I don't think there was a flight in the opposite direction, ANC-MIA). But adding AKL is the obvious solution (and a nice CX flight).

A good bit of self-flagellation - that's what I like to see!

Have you tried asking for original routing credit from QFF or have they not got such a policy, even in an unofficial "just this once" kind of way?

The MIA-ANC is gone, but the seasonal DFW-ANC (and back) is there from May to ...?(Oct?).

It is, however, on a 757. So even in F it's not really F.

September.

A couple of years back, there was an SJU-ANC single flight #. That was nice!

I have gotten original routing credit to QFF when the change was involuntary on my part. Just call them. Since another airline was involved it may take a week to get the credit while they confirm details.

Back on the original topic:
Have you put the route into Mileage Monkey? It calculates SC's for you and shows what routes are / are not available in first class (A) and in bus (D). Red text means no class available on that route (but should be checked with each airline). A manual calculation is then needed to get the actual SC's for your route. MM is not 100% correct due to ever changing airline routes, but it's a very good start.

the 16 segment limit starts June 01 so you have 1 month to get the 20 segment trip ticketed

I had hoped for this embarrassing thread to go away over night but far from it. 10 replies. What can I say. :rolleyes:

I actually have the BP for the flights so I send them in and didn't get a reply. I will push them to give me credit if they come back negative. Nice idea, I wouldn't have tried this without you suggesting it.

There are still some very nice long flights out of the Caribbean which go via SJU and DFW/FLL to LAX for example. The problem is they do not work for QFF because they do not book into A class. So for QFF this flight earns less SCs than a flight from NYC to DFW.

Yes, done that so this is were the current SCs come from. And the trip is already ticketed so I will need to change it now.

Thanks for your help everyone!