Think Mileage Runs are Dead? 22 Segments in Business Class for $550

Over at German frequent flyer site Vielfliegertreff.de for the last week they’ve been having fun with a fare starting out in Berlin, flying to Frankfurt and then to Spain and bouncing around Spain all in business class.

Lucas sends me this great example of the principle:

This is really useful for earning elite status in programs like British Airways that award ‘tier points’ and bonus business class. The flights aren’t a particularly great distance, and aren’t expensive but short business class flights can be useful for status in oneworld programs once you look beyond the U.S.

I’m not going to go into too much detail, it’s their deal and it’s probably only going to be of interest to a subset of readers (but for them it will be very interesting) so I’ll just recommend heading to the Vielfliegertreff.de forum thread and using Google translate which is built into the Chrome browser.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. @gene – yeah you misconnect and then try to explain to someone in Spain, likely using English, a second language for both of you, why you are doing this. I imagine their reaction would be you are a crazy person as they hand you a non-stop ticket to your final destination

  2. Gary, can you start posting mileage runs for your US readers? I like where this is going but some for the demographic on this side of the pond would be nice!

  3. Hopefully you can IRROP and request for original mileage credit. Wife did that for ORD-BOS-EWR-IAD-EWR-BOS-IAD-ORD a few years ago when she was segment running for * gold. At some point, one flight was delayed, and she routed back to her destination directly and got credit for the entire ticket.

  4. Yes, in case of IRROP you can get the original mileage for it. And yes, you can get it ticketed on some OTAs and any “regular” travel agent can ticket this (see the VFT forum)

  5. I thought with IRROP you get mileage credit on the new itinerary if you are rebooked with the same carrier and you only get original ticket mileage credit if you are booked with a different carrier (which I assume is extremely rare now since it seems like no one wants to interline with anyone now, even within the same alliance).

    This almost happened to me on USAirways and I asked them nicely to give me the original credit and they did despite their rules. I haven’t flown American since the merger thank god so I don’t know if this rule was brought over.

  6. The Citation flights are on Hanh Air. That’s a rather interesting “airline”. Most of their revenue comes from the interlining agreements. Check out the article in the Oct 2016 issue of Airways Magazine.

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