Why fly direct ... ?

[Deleted member 29185]

I am going to give an example of our travel bookings and plans to try and help some people see what can be done and provide some rationality to what seems very irrational. Moin

Thanks for a very informative post. I'm looking forward to doing this myself (and that day is drawing nearer), so I do appreciate the effort you went to in helping us understand this dark art!

 

[JessicaTam]

This is great. Thanks so much for taking time to give so much detail. Super helpful . One question -what are EQM's ?

Elite Qualifying Miles. Used with AA to obtain/retain status.

 

[wanderer_au]

Actually I totally disagree. We have 4 kids aged 9-13.

I think the key here is that younger children are less likely to put up with long haul trips, and gender may play a role here. Our 5 y.o. son is very active, loves climbing trees, playing sport, riding bikes, etc. His idea of hell is sitting still in a seat for hours. My in-laws' farm is about 8 hours drive from Sydney and we break the drive up in two, overnighting in Gundagai, because he won't cop sitting still that long. Our 3.5 month old daughter is a different proposition, but still is a brake on travel.

Maybe one day he will cop long haul travel, but not now. Given how active he is, and how new our daughter is, the idea of long haul international travel for anything other than work in our house has ZERO chance of approval, let alone routing on the impressive scale one sees on AFF!

 

[GarrettM]

I think the key here is that younger children are less likely to put up with long haul trips, and gender may play a role here. Our 5 y.o. son is very active, loves climbing trees, playing sport, riding bikes, etc. His idea of hell is sitting still in a seat for hours. My in-laws' farm is about 8 hours drive from Sydney and we break the drive up in two, overnighting in Gundagai, because he won't cop sitting still that long. Our 3.5 month old daughter is a different proposition, but still is a brake on travel.

Maybe one day he will cop long haul travel, but not now. Given how active he is, and how new our daughter is, the idea of long haul international travel for anything other than work in our house has ZERO chance of approval, let alone routing on the impressive scale one sees on AFF!

Understandable. I am dreaming of the day I can take my 11 month old daughter on trips, leaving mum at home.

 

[galah]

Here I am laughing along to all of the replies, when I suddenly realised that I likely suffer from the same affliction as everybody else here.. And I also have a 'nesting strategy'

Here's the routing over my next two NYC-MEL trips, mixture of Y and J/F with a nested HNL-BDA ticket that lets me take a standalone JFK-BDA trip as an added bonus. Tuned for SC earn / $ value to requal for WP, not absolute routing insanity.

Why fly direct when you can be absolutely wrecked?

 

[Moindardt]

My daughter just showed me one of her posts' of a photo I took of her at LHR which she had also written this comment which I thought was perfect.

"Life is about the journey, not the destination.. so it obviously makes sense to take the longest route possible"

 

[Denali]

I usually prefer and would have booked direct route if it was an option but using Virgin and Delta, I booked SYD>LAX>ATL>SCL (Santiago)> IPC (Easter Island)>SCL>ATL> BNA (Nashville)>ATL>LAX>SYD.

SYD>SCL one way is 37hrs, yikes but its all J so I will be sleeping for most of it and we get to see Nashville & Atlanta (haven't been there before).

I calculated that by the end of the trip, I will have enough SCs for the year to gift VA WP.