re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread
As Agent 86 would say: "Missed it by that much...."
I have been putting together a 280K J Itinerary over about 6 months, using the "start & finish in Asia" technique to squeeze in 2 return trips to Europe on the one itinerary.
I was feeling pretty proud with myself that the itinerary calculated out to 34,984 miles in Great Circle Mapper (including the 1 surface sector).
But then the tears...
While I was getting my last 2 sectors booked through QFF, it turned out that the mile calculation method that they use measured the distance as 35,080 miles. A difference of 96 miles, or less than 0.3%. No amount of begging, pleading, whimpering, sobbing would make any difference. Computer said No!
So, as a result of the breach of the distance rule, the itinerary priced out a points difference of about an extra 500,000 points :shock:.
Fortunately I was able to salvage the situation by omitting one short domestic sector (and it's associated surface sector), which brought the miles total down by about 400. So then the itinerary was legal again, and my pulse rate & blood pressure were able to slowly return to normal after a little time and a lot of scotch.
So...Does anyone know of a better tool to use than GCM? i.e. one that exactly matches the Qantas/OneWorld tool?