Status Credits for Layover

[tomasp]

Hi Guys,

Flying to South Africa this weekend for a couple of weeks and booked through a travel agent. On the way back we depart Cape Town, have a lay-over in Johannesburg (where it states a change of aircraft may or may not be needed) and continue to Singapore. On the Singapore booking site though it has it as 1 journey (Cape Town to Singapore with lay-over in Johannesburg in the notes).

How are status credits calculated on this leg?

Would you earn the status for the Cape Town to Johannesburg and then Johannesburg to Singapore, or would it all be calculated purely on Cape Town to Singapore as 1 trip?

 

[grubbidok]

It depends solely on the flight number. Same flight number = same flight as far as SCs are concerned.

It can even happen when the "legs" aren't deliberately part of a larger trip. I have the same issue sometimes when I fly to Nicaragua on DL. LAX-ATL and ATL-MGA share a flight number in the DL system. Different planes, different crew, sometimes different terminal, a couple of hours layover, for all intents and purposes totally different legs - but counted as the same "flight" for SCs and points.

Seems even weirder as half the time when booking I'll be put on the non-matching flight numbers LAX-ATL; ATL-MGA as these are actually quicker to get to MGA!

 

[CPMaverick]

It depends on how it is booked. If it is booked as a 'direct' flight (even with a stopover), then the system sees it only as a flight between the start and end points. In this case there would be one flight number for both flights, and for all intents and purposes, you never had that stopover.

To confuse things further, it is possible to book both legs of a 'direct' flight separately. So even if the flight number is the same, it is still possible to credit for the individual flights. This is unusual, but it can happen.

The best strategy is to avoid these 'direct' flights with a stopover... they are messy.