Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific is regarded as one of the world’s best airline brands, and offers a great experience in both first class and business class, along with amazing lounges in Hong Kong and at some outstations.
Continue reading: How To Redeem Cathay Pacific Asia Miles For Best Value
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"the brown color is for first class, while the turquoise color is for business class or economy"
I think brown means "few seats available" and turquoise means "many seats available" - searches to many intra-Asian destinations return some "brown" dates despite those routes not having first class.
(Usually, as far as Cathay Pacific's award seat interface goes, "few seats" = one seat)
@ Alvin | YTHK -- Whoops, good catch, my mistake! Updated the post to reflect that. Thanks!
Not just Cathay restricting awards, almost all of the Oneworld partner airlines are doing it, notably Etihad, JAL and to a lesser extent, Qatar. The big question, for me, is WHY? Honestly, it greatly devalues the program. I don't need miles for a domestic first class ticket - for me it was always flying award travel biz or first class to places like the Maldives, Cairo, New Delhi and Sydney that kept me with American and their co-branded credit card.
Any ideas why this has been happening?
Ben, I think you’re missing the one gem of Asia Miles… their routing rules. Unlike a lot of programs, they let you combine awards that normally wouldn’t be allowed (think Aeroplan). I was able to book Dallas to Tokyo to Sydney all on one award in JAL business class for only 90k miles with $200 (before the devalue). This routing is not allowed on AA or other oneworld partners. I was also able to book Dallas to DOH to Sydney in Qsuites and first class (A380) for 112k miles and $500 in taxes in fees. This is how I got to experience Al Safwa first class lounge. Now these aren’t amazing deals, but getting to Australia in business on awards can be incredibly difficult sometimes, especially for 2 people. Plus, if you combine it with a 20 to 25 percent transfer bonus in addition to Asia Miles current 10% transfer bonus and you’re talking about some sweet spots with award availability to Australia. Granted, this was before the most recent devalue, but I’m sure it’s still looking into if you would prefer to fly business through a connecting country to Australia.
There’s thousands of bloggers and YouTubers and wannabe influencers all talking about award travel. In my random group of friends there’s quite a few folks looking into it. Availability is scarcer with more and more people wanting to enjoy luxury experiences at a fraction of the cost.
Similarly, it’s how even high tier elites rarely get complimentary upgrades - airlines have gotten much better at pricing and inventory, and as such have been cutting down on deals.
Asia Miles has a nice pricing feature in that mixed cabin rewards are prorated according to the distance of the individual segments. Before the devaluation hit, I was able to book JAL MEL-NRT in business and HND-DFW in first on one ticket for 115100 miles, when the HND-DFW segment alone would have been 135000 miles.
Last year we booked BOS-HKG-CGK on CX for November 30 and return December 14 CGK-NRT-BOS ON JL. 2 seats in J, 85K for each seat OW. Trip had to be canceled in fall due to illness. the trip was to go to Raj Ampat for snorkeling. Redeposited miles, I think the fee was $117 for each ticket.
We rebooked the snorkeling to January 2025, so I've been watching availability closely. I have not seen a single case of 2 J on CX metal from any US gateway 350-360 days out using Asia Miles over the past 2 months. Not one. I see a few from west coast gateways a few months out. I see partner seats on JL, AY and BA (never QR), but the itineraries are not very good. It also seems that the website doesn't allow booking the entire itinerary ie, the NRT-CGK leg would have to be separately booked on the website, so a call would apparently be necessary to book the entire trip.
I cry over spilled milk fron 2020... we had BOS-HKG-PER booked for 3, 2 in J and 1 in F (for the BOS-HKG segments). What could've been.
They don't make it easy! I need to burn 600k point before another devaluation.
Have they loaded their winter schedule yet? There was plentiful availability from JFK up til Oct 23ish.
My experience contradicts your opening assertion on availability. I’m a long time member of AA and CX/AM, emerald in both. I get much better availability on CX flights on AA, and for lower cost. Flying CX Business class next week from nrt to hkg using AA, nothing available on CX/AM. Same for hkg to Hkt this coming summer. While still better than AA, service on CX is on the way down, it is becoming a low cost Chinese carrier.
Andrew were you able to do a stopover on those flights?
We you looking for each leg individually? Thank you.
In my experience, Cathay has always charged fuel surcharges and they've been pretty high. Looks like they just reduced the cost some, but they still have them, so you may want to update that part of the post. I also just did a test booking which confirms this.
https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_HK/prepare-trip/travel-advisories/fuel-surcharge-updates.html
I found an amazing redemption with Asia Miles from Auckland to Adelaide on Qatar Airlines in business class for 40,000 miles and $50. The plane had Q suites! 4 hour flight. Wonderful.
Going to Japan in October and I've been monitoring for award availability for months now. Ideally we'd be on JAL or ANA with a nonstop, but the award space (J or F) is just not there and this is not a trip where I have the luxury of trying to book it last minute (or even ~2 weeks out). Needing 2 seats also makes it more difficult.
I finally found 2 first class seats on CX, JFK-HKG-HND. While the devaluation in October hurts, I caved because 1) it's the only premium space I can find, and 2) honestly, 160k for first class seats on both segments plus a stopover didn't feel like a horrendous deal. Yes, it's quite a bit more expensive than it would have been just a few months ago, but not terrible. United is charging 200k per ticket for Polaris one-way, nonstop to Japan...
Fees were about $240 per ticket.
Now - how to return from Japan...?
I meant to add, while I had to call to book this, CX's agents were excellent. My date changed and they were able to amend it quickly, and they ended up holding the two tickets for me for over a week. Never waited more than 3 minutes for them to answer and the calls were quick and easy.
@pstm91: I had such a hard time finding premium seats from NRT-LAX/ YVR last month. I finally booked China Airlines in August. It was such a pleasant surprise and a joyful flight.
Hi Ben. You have repeated in several articles over the past months and years that CX allows stopovers on round-trip awards. It has been pointed out to you on many occasions that there is a significant limitation to this which makes this claim somewhat misleading.
On any round-trip award (which can have a maximum of 4 sectors) the stopover must be the turnaround point. That is to say, you cannot ticket a transfer as a stopover.
As a result, there is effectively no stopover allowed on round trips since ticketing two one-ways would achieve the same outcome and at the same cost.
This is covered in sections 7c and 7d in the Flight Awards Redemption - General Conditions.
One additional area you might have covered is the strategic use of mixed cabin redemptions, where booking and then skipping the second sector of a one-way can still result in significant savings due to the pro-rating of the required miles.