Questions and Answers

OK Ask Lucky team, my turn for a question. I’m helping some folks book a ticket soon and it appears Asia Miles may be the best place to transfer their MRs. I’ve never booked using AMs and I’m looking at their award chart and see it’s distance-based.

My question is this: when calculating my distance, do I include all the connecting segments or just the origin & destination.

For example: They’re based at BNA so must connect either to ORD (if there’s space available) or, more likely, to the west coast. Though AA does have a BNA-LAX non-stop, it’s quite possible there won’t be award space. So, do I calculate outbound mileage as BNA-DFW-LAX-HKG-PEK or just BNA-PEK?

The CX chart is point to point. I.e. Los angles to Taipei is based on the distance between those two cities even tho the flights are LAX-HKG-TPE. This could be oneworld flights if a single ow carrier.

The oneworld chart only chart (multiple ow carriers) is segment based so it would be lax-Hkg + Hkg-Tpe.

Does this answer your question?

I think so. BNA-PEK is 6983 miles, whereas BNA-DFW-LAX-HKG-PEK is 10,360 miles. So you’re saying the award would price out in Zone D (5001-7500 miles) vs Zone F (10,001+), right?

For zone D from the Cathay chart you will have to find either American all the way or American to a Cathay gateway city then CX the rest. But aa isn’t shown online so you have to call.

The other is 2 carriers without cx or 3 carriers with cx. Like aa to Ord then jal to hkg and cx to pek via hkg. That would price individually bna-Ord Nrt-hkg-pek. It would be zone 8 in the multi-carrier chart.

You could even do bna-atl-doh-pek on Qatar. Or BA through London. Asia miles collects surcharges.

Yeah we could do AA from BNA to a CX gateway. I’m also hoping space opens up on JAL (would route via NRT instead of HKG in that case). Will just have to see what space becomes available. Thanks for the help.

My problem with Asia Miles is that transfers arent instant and they dont do award holds so space may be gone by the time miles transfer in. Also, you have to call/fill out a form with the segments to book.

However, I think I cleared the waitlist for CX F every time I did it, which is great, even if JFK-HKG is a stupid amount of points (though with the recent AA deval its pretty much on par).

The non-instant transfers are a concern but since we’ll be booking right at the window I’m hopeful that there will be space on either CX or JL. After speaking with my friends they may have enough AA miles to book one way so we may do that for the outbound (where several of us would like to arrive together) and use the Asia Miles for the return (they’re not doing the trip extension, so would be flying home separately anyway).

Keep in mind Asia miles charges more for one way. You might consider finding a flight from any gateway west of Chicago on Cx for 60/120/180 round trip and pay for a cheap flight to the gateway.

Yes, I already mentioned this to them and that’s when they decided to see how many AA miles they had. They have quite a stash of MRs and I think we’re more concerned about syncing the outbound flight than spending a few extra MRs. If they do have enough for 2xAA in J on the outbound I may looking into Singapore for the return. It depends on availability and routing.