I've been helping a colleague put one of these together. He emailed QFF to try to get a definitive answer on the surface sectors (wrongly) being considered as two of the five stops:
"With respect to the oneworld classic five stop award, I am aware that surface sectors are permitted and that the distance between the two points is counted in the 35K maximum mileage. However, can you please confirm that only the disembarkation point is counted as a stop, not both the disembarkation point and the next port of embarkation? For example, if I was to fly SINMEL and then make my own way to BNE before travelling BNEAKL, could you please confirm that only MEL is counted as one of the five stops and not both MEL and BNE?
Speaking of outsourcing, here's the response:
"The stop over will count as one trip due the booking that you have paid. If you stop over in another country or city to your next connecting flight to your destination, that will count as one trip."
That's copied verbatim from the email he got from QFF. Please tell me he and I aren't the only ones who cannot fathom what the heck the Manila agent is trying to say.