Maxmising LHR-ORD (The Spring Commute) - Part I....

So it's coming up to that time of year again when I visit the USA.

As I'm on limited time to, there will be little time for mileage running, or doing great hops here and there. So what's the obvious answer? Either nest a trip inside a trip (which 9/10 times isn't allowed) ... or try to maximise mileage vs cost. So whilst A) is a nice idea - it isn't going to happen (least of all I've only got a  few leave days left this year!), it has to be B - Maximising Mileage!

Lets go back to Math 101. Simple addition.

The calculations I'm going to use exclude elite non qualifying  bonus miles but added BMI's minimum elite mileage bonus (flights  <600 miles get 600), routed on Star Alliance Airlines only (Confused? Good...).

Segment Start	Segment Stop	Segment Length	Route Total
LHR	ORD	3942	3942
LHR	EWR	3465
EWR	ORD	719	4184
LHR	PHL	3545
PHL	ORD	678	4223
LHR	IAD	3677
IAD	ORD	600	4277

Or for those graphicly challenged:

 Calculations based on the Great Circle Mapper Lets now play with these figures to give us our magical pence per mile. (Note: Codeshares excluded. It muddys things at this point)

Airline	Via	Cost in GPB	Route Total	Pence/Mile
United	Non Stop	£327	7884	4.18
US Airways	PHL	£340	8446	4.03
Continental	EWR	£372	8368	4.45
United	IAD	£332	8554	3.88

There are lots of ways to cut this up, but the net result is this: I'm going via Dulles it seems.

Oh joy........

However, there is a part 2 to this post after I spent some time with United.Bomb and USAirways.bomb. More a bit later... ;)