Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky and team,

I love your page, hoping you can offer some advice for my situation. I live in Boston and my fiancée lives in Hong Kong. She will be moving to America in November once her Visa comes through and I am planning to head to Hong Kong, spend a few days with her family and our local friends, then bring her back to the States so she doesn’t have to travel alone. I would like to save as much money as possible (that’s probably obvious) and I currently have just over 66,300 Asia Miles available. From what I can tell my best option is to fly one way to HK on my miles. (Cathay Pacific redeem is 55K for economy and 66K for premium economy, both would be direct and dates I am looking have availability right now) then book 2 one-way flights for her and I back to Boston using a discount site like Skiplagged or Kayak which seem to have the best deals I can find. Right now it looks like it will be about $590 each (1 connection) bringing my total cost for the trip to around $1,180 plus the Asia Miles used.

My other option is booking a round trip flight to HK and back using cash, which I think could save me money vs. the 2 one-way tickets and using the miles to cover her flight back. The issue with this is I would have to arrange for my return flight to be the same as hers and try to get seats near each other. This seems a bit daunting to me… and to have to book one of the flights available for mileage on the CX website reduces the discounts I am able to find online for my cash booking significantly as it makes my searches much less flexible. Do you agree that my first scenario is the smarter option? Just want to make sure I am not missing out on big time savings because it seems more complicated.

Also, assuming scenario 1, do you think its worth using all my miles to get the Premium Economy ticket or would you just use the 55K on economy and save the 11K miles for the future? I am not very tall so leg room isn’t a huge issue and I wont need additional baggage or anything. I have done the long haul to Hong Kong about 5 times (Economy and Business, never Premium Econ) but always thought Premium seemed like a waste of cash for what didn’t seem much different than the economy experience but now that I am using miles I’m not sure if its worth it for the deeper reclining and wider seats.

Any help would be appreciated and I am open to other suggestions! Thanks in advance!