At the moment, I’m beginning planning for my October trip to the USA (There’s a little event going in Chicago I’m invited to do the photos in… so it’s rude to say no).
As I still need a fair wodge of miles to hit gold (wodge in this case being about 14k or so), I have to be slightly careful in how to plan this out.
Here was the initial plan
Breakdown:
| LHR-ORD London Heathrow — Chicago O’Hare |
3942 |
| ORD-LAS Chicago O’Hare — Las Vegas – Mccaran International Airport |
1514 |
| LAS-SFO Las Vegas – Mccaran International Airport — San Francisco |
600 (414) |
| SFO-LHR San Francisco — London Heathrow |
5367 |
| Trip Total | 11423 (11237) |
Hmm. Good – but we can do better than that!
An interesting wrinkle in this is the use of 600 mile minimums for flights under that distance. And of course, there are such things as married pairs…
So lets look at this again -what are the breakdown points between all of these points?
LHR-ORD can be split as LHR-IAD-ORD (3942 vs 4277)
ORD-LAS can be split as ORD-LAX-LAS or ORD-SFO-LAS (1546 vs 2245 vs 2446)
LAS-SFO … it’s not worth splitting alas verses the additional cost. (600)
SFO-LHR can be split as SFO-SAN-LHR (5637 vs 6085)
So with a bit of table magic…
| LHR-IAD London Heathrow — Washington Dulles | 3677 |
| IAD-ORD Washington Dulles — Chicago O’Hare | 600 (589) |
| ORD-LAX or ORD-SFO Chicago O’Hare — Los Angeles Chicago O’Hare — San Francisco |
1745 (LAX) 1846 (SFO) |
| LAX-LAS or SFO-LAS Los Angeles — Las Vegas – Mccaran International Airport San Francisco — Las Vegas – Mccaran International Airport |
600 (236) |
| LAS-SFO Las Vegas – Mccaran International Airport — San Francisco | 600 (414) |
| SFO-SAN San Francisco — San Diego Airport/td> |
600 (447) |
| SAN-LHR San Diego Airport — London Heathrow | 5485 |
| Trip Total |
13307 (12593) via LAX 13408 (12872) via SFO |
Using LAX
Using SFO
Considering instead of being nearly 2500 mile short, I’d now be 250 miles short of Gold… well the numbers really show off what a bit of planning can do. I’m trying to put an extra segment in… but how this hits the costs…
Notes: All numbers approximate to within 20 miles.
Image credits: Great Circle Mapper – http://gc.kls2.com, Calculation tool MileCalc.com
