SQueeze

Initially I also thought it’s 1.8x for many years.
But No...
I have done itineraries with 220% direct distance!

So no magic number. Jus5 need to call and ask. Even LAX-SIN-BKK-USM

NetJets Germany

Forgive me, I had not been quite precise enough: What I had meant was "hubs of home-nation *A carriers", e.g.

PEK: CA
AKL: NZ
TYO: NH

However, that theory does not stack up in all cases either, since, as you helpfully pointed out yourself, ICN as an origin is allowed and OZ would be the home carrier for that market...

So perhaps the maximum mileage involved might indeed be the issue. So the next question is: Who determines this? Each airline individually? The alliance? Someone else? I have seen another post somewhere that mentioned an "IATA Maximum Mileage Permitted" or something of that sort... Has anybody heard of that before?

oopl

I'm trying to book a one-way U.S. domestic flight that requires a connection in IAH as that is the only option between the city pairs. However, SQ phone agents consider this backtracking and want to charge me for 2 awards. (25,000 miles instead of 12,500miles.)
Has anyone had luck arguing otherwise?

lokijuh

If the route distance exceeds 150% of the direct distance between the origin and destination airport, then you are unlikely to be successful, What city pairs are you looking at?

drvannostren

Reviving a dead thread a little, hopefully you guys can help. I've found that my SQ miles are kinda useless for what I actually want, which is MDE-CAI-CPT-MDE. Since there are 0 available QV flights via SQ. But LH,TK,AC,ET flights are pretty well available, at least the ones I need.

So I'm looking at MAD-CAI-CPT-MAD now. Of course, it seems you can't book this online, which you should be able to, it's pretty easy. So I call in, I got quoted about 3 different prices. What I'm trying to do is MAD-CPT round trip, with a stopover in CAI. Seems easy enough to me, as long as it complies with MPM/Backtracking whatever.

But basically what he quoted me was 3 one-way trips, MAD-CAI, CAI-CPT, CPT-MAD, for like 70,000 miles, plus a bunch of cash. He did mention a $100USD stopover, then quotes me a price of 3 one-ways. I really tried to drill into him that I wanted a STOPOVER in Cairo for like 5 days. But somehow, that was never on the table.

I don't mean to offend anyone at all, but then we got into this circular logic of English and Singaporean English, where he'd say things like "the cape town to the madrid, direct flight" even though there was no direct flight, it was a connecting flight. So I'm not sure if he totally understood what I was trying to do. Then I thought I made some headway and suddenly it was 85,000miles? That's not even a possibility on the chart between Europe-Africa. I even told him, Europe-North Africa is 35,000 miles, but of course my destination is South Africa, which is costlier at 55,000. He never ONCE quoted 55,000, he quoted my 17,500 for MAD-CAI, then another 25,000 for CAI-CPT and another 27,500 for CPT-MAD and kept agreeing with me that this was the round trip I was looking for, not just 3 one-way awards.

I'm tearing my hair out here. He asked to call to me back in 10 minutes, but I'm not optimistic I'll actually get a call and I kinda doubt even if I did that they'd be able to do what I'm trying to do. If he even said "sir that routing violates our backtracking rule", I'd be frustrated, but maybe I could look for another route, but he just kept giving me the same routing I wanted, only at a 3x one-way pricing...am I nuts here? is this routing totally invalid?

drvannostren

MAD-CAI-CPT-MAD I'm told 75,000KF miles. So tried ZRH-CAI-CPT-ZRH (original routing was MAD-ZRH-CAI), suddenly ZRH-CAI is no longer available. I was told I was over the segment limit for a Round trip award.

So then I tried VIE-CAI-CPT-VIE...again 75,000 miles. Despite knocking off a segment and travelling in a much tighter MPM routing. No agent can tell me why. No one can find a proper booking. These miles are absolutely f******* useless aren't they?

I don't want to fly SIN-BKK for 40,000 miles in J...but it seems like that's basically gonna be the only thing available.

Unionruler

You're conflating issues. If you HUCA enough you will get what you want, which I understand is MAD-CAI(stop)-CPT outbound and CPT-anywhere-MAD inbound. Provided there is availability. Just because 1 or 2 agents can't doesn't mean the next one can't as well...there are some very experienced and/or patient agents out there. There is a 6 segment limit for each ticket, but the advantage of the roundtrip award is that you get the free stopover.

Unionruler

Wow...can you share your routing haha. Is it something like MEX-EWR-HNL? Or DSS-LIS-GRU?

freed0m

deleted.

drvannostren

I can see every segment of the itinerary i want, but they tell me they can't see them together on their end. How the F do i get around this? GRU-IST-CAI-ADD-CPT-IST-GRU. If she just told me I can't transit the same city twice, or it was backtracking or something else, I would believe them. But she told me that because CPT-GRU isn't available online it's impossible. Even tho CPT-IST and IST-GRU are both available on their site.

What the hell do i do with these people?

lokijuh

Unionruler

I thought you wanted to start and end in MDE. MDE-BOG-IST-CPT breaks MPM by a lot, let alone GRU-IST-CPT. SQ would expect you to fly MDE-BOG-GRU-JNB-CPT, or if you're very lucky maybe you can convince them to give you MDE-MIA-EWR-CPT (featuring the new UA CPT service, not sure if it operates when you want) on a single award.

drvannostren

Stop is in CAI.

Finally an answer that makes some sense. I've got plenty of experience dealing with Aeroplan, but never found a KF "power user" guide so I have no ammo and just have to take every answer they give me, even though I know HUACA applies with KF.

I begged her last night to just tell me the REASON why I couldn't do it and I dunno if it's incompetence or a language barrier (the KF agents always speak very good english, but it also always feels like SOMETHING is missing) but the only thing she told me is that the "last leg isn't available" to which my response was constantly, then why can I see it on your website? They asked me to send a screenshot, which I did and they received, but the answer I got was the same. If they simply told me "sir that routing violates the MPM" I would've hung up and starting working again.

The problem now is the garbage availability of Krisflyer. They seem to have 0 Avianca flights, so MDE as a starting point doesn't work unless you can find a magic Copa availability. TK is 50/50, LH is like 70/30 accurate. I would've gladly settled for BOG-FRA-CAI etc or BOG-PTY-FRA etc but there's no availability on those days or any days seemingly for those particular flights. That's why I started working from GRU, which I did find a little bit better availability from.

I'd be happy to book GRU-Anywhere-CAI but I guess I'm violating the MPM going the direction I looked and GRU-JNB availability on SA is fairly sparse at the best of times, and on KF it seems to be non-existant.

Thanks for the clear answer, it kinda kills my hopes, but I'll go back to the drawing board and book the MAD-CAI-CPT-MAD booking I had lined up. It's a bit of a waste of the miles, but it seems like that's the lesser of the evils.

Unionruler

Based on my experience, the call center agents tend to quote the wrong reason why a particular routing is disallowed, but the logic in the computer program they're working with is sound so there often is a legit reason.

I've looked at South Africa - South America redemptions a fair bit. AV award inventory can be found, even in J. ET and CM J can be found too. I have never seen TK J award inventory to those regions (apart from GRU-EZE). UA Y is abundant.

Some options for your drawing board:
- Set ADD as outbound destination, CPT as inbound origin, buy ADD-CPT for USD334 on ET. Outbound: MDE/BOG-MAD/BCN-CAI(stop)-ADD Inbound: CPT-JNB-GRU-BOG
- Set CPT as outbound destination, NBO as inbound origin, buy CPT-NBO for USD290 on ET (1 stop). Outbound: BOG-GRU-JNB-CPT Inbound NBO-CAI(stop)-MAD/BCN-MDE-BOG
- Set CPT as outbound destination, EBB as inbound origin, buy CPT-EBB for USD271 on ET (1 stop). Outbound: BOG-GRU-JNB-CPT Inbound EBB-CAI(stop)-MAD/BCN-MDE-BOG

drvannostren

I'm trying to find Y space, but I do appreciate the effort, I'll try those routings. I really haven't found a single AV seat via Krisflyer. I keep looking on EF, finding lots, and then nothing on KF. I can't use UA, the passenger would need a visa for the US just to transit, and there's no guarantees on that and the added cost/effort aren't exactly worth it.

The days I'm looking at I can't find any GRU-JNB unfortunately. The award space on that routing on regular programs isn't great, but on KF it seems non-existent. But I will look into these routings specifically to see if I can make em work. Thanks for the detailed reply.