Just a few questions, when these flights are booked, are they all appearing on the one multi city booking page (with up to 6 options), so when the results are shown, it is one large result page with 8 or 10 flights.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean here, but I think it depends on how you specified the search. I've done status runs where I've just specified start and finish, and the option with many connections appeared towards the end of a long list. But sometimes you need to do a multi-city search in order to get the flights you want.
And are they all on consecutive days (ie new city pair needs the next day etc) or are some of them on the same day, and how critical is it to place the time of day (I am thinking that if the next leg leaves that night, it may be better than the next day), and is a key to a lower price, to avoid going twice through the same hub. Finally if I place "All day" is this going to cause a problem, or do I have to be more careful
Almost all the status runs I've looked at are on the same day, or near to it; e.g. first flight leaves at 23:55. I think there's a maximum time (maybe 5 hours) that you can spend at an intermediate point before it's considered a stopover, and stopovers usually aren't allowed.
As for going through the same hub twice, that's controlled by the routing rules for the fare in question, which you can see with
expertflyer.com. I know of one run that allows you to return to your point of origin, but I think all the crazy routes which allowed multiple transits through the same hub have disappeared.
I am familiar with how the SCs are deterimined, I am assuming that the miles show on the AA site are the ones that Qantas uses. But I want to check that this is exactly the case as MIA is just short of SJU a little less than 1200 miles, so it is definitely 60 and not 80 SCs
Sorry, I don't know for certain. I've always just relied on the great circle distance, as given by
gcmap.com or Mileage Monkey.
I guess that I know which cities to start in, and where to end, but I think that it is something that I am doing in the booking process that is wrong.
Booking can often be the hardest part. I've been unable to book some trips on
americanairlines.com.au, but have booked okay on
aa.com. And I know that many Delta runs can't be booked on
delta.com, but need to be booked through Expedia or something like that.
Hope this helps.