Questions and Answers

My husband and I will be traveling in Thailand for the month of February 2019. I was able to secure roundtrip business class seats between PDX and HKG on CX with AA miles however at the time of my booking, there were no flights available from HKG to BKK or CNX. We plan to fly directly from HKG to Chiang Mai to start our trip. In my research, I kept reading that inter-Asia flights were cheap however apparently not between HKG and CNX. I wasn’t sure how to find reward availability for the flight, so assumed I would have to pay cash for a ticket. Several months ago, the best I could find for travel between HKG and CNX on 2/3/19 was $211 on Thai AirAsia. Thinking I could find a better deal if I waited (WRONG!) I didn’t purchase the tickets. The same ticket is now $384!! I REALLY don’t want to spend $800 on 2 tickets to Chiang Mai, but it’s too late to change my whole itinerary in the hopes of finding a cheaper date to fly.
I am wondering if anyone has any ideas. I have plenty of miles (TY, AMEX, AA) but don’t know where to begin looking for award flights. I did look on Cathay Pacific and saw that I could get on a wait list for a flight- I’m just not sure what that really means and if it is possible to book it using my AA miles. Can you offer any suggestions? Is there a chance that the HKG-CNX flight prices will go down as the date of our trip gets closer?
Thank You for any information you can share!
Linda

Hi Linda –

Looks like $256? Are you okay traveling in Economy on that flight? Alternatively, you could look at using your Amex points to redeem through amextravel.com if you feel you are more points heavy than cash heavy

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[QUOTE=”rickyw, post: 61072, member: 1436″]Hi Linda –

Looks like $256? Are you okay traveling in Economy on that flight? Alternatively, you could look at using your Amex points to redeem through amextravel.com if you feel you are more points heavy than cash heavy

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Thank you for your reply- so I can use amex points through amextravel and get that same price? I looked on amextravel but the prices were WAY higher. do they price match? How would I go about doing that? would that then also qualify me for 5x points for the purchase? That would certainly help!
Thanks again-
Linda

Sorry Linda, I may have spoke too soon. I don’t know if AMEX Travel can book Hong Kong Express. It doesn’t show as an option when I log in… agree the prices are way higher.

You could try calling and asking for a quote, but I wouldn’t anticipate them to match Google Flights.

I’m not sure if Lucky has done a recent post on using amextravel.com but here is a pretty good rundown of the benefits:

[URL]https://upgradedpoints.com/american-express-travel[/URL]

This could also be a good situation to use a card that offers cash-back so you could just wipe out the purchase… something like the Barclaycard Arrival Plus. Do you only have Amex and Citi?