Cathay Pacific is regarded by many as "the world’s airline", but they are also known to limit the availability of award seats, especially through partner programs. Cathay Pacific is often a go-to for Oneworld solutions and a great place to look for round-the-world trips. In this article, we’ll navigate their search tools, fare rules, and, of course, how to go about finding those elusive Business Class and First Class seats.
Keep on reading below.
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Asia Miles is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards with a transfer ratio of 1:1, making them perhaps the most useful Oneworld alliance transfer partner as they can be used for award redemptions across the alliance. Cathay Pacific is regarded by many as one of the world’s best airlines with an excellent First Class service. In recent years, they’ve restricted the number of award seats that can be booked by Oneworld partner frequent flyer programs, such as AAdvantage, in particular for First Class redemptions.
In other words, Asia Miles is a great program for accessing Cathay Pacific's First Class award seats for booking far into the future. Additionally, Asia Miles provides some great redemption opportunities on Oneworld alliance.
What makes Asia Miles tricky is the fact that it has different pricing structures for award redemptions. Single-airline redemptions are priced on a distance-based award chart where the price in miles is determined by the total flown distance on one-way segments.
Single-airline rewards come with some restrictions such as a max limit of 4 segments for round-trips and 2 segments on one-ways. However, there are some sweet spots, such as booking flights in the longest distance range of 8,500+ miles.
The best use of Cathay Asia Miles is for Oneworld multi-airline redemptions. Unlike single-airline redemptions, multi-airline redemptions need to include at least two Oneworld airlines, excluding Cathay’s own flights. What sets these redemptions apart is the fact that you can include up to 8 flight segments and 5 stopovers. This essentially means that you can book a round-the-world in Business Class for 240,000 miles, with a maximum flown distance of 50,000 miles.
One thing that’s worth noting about Asia Miles is the fact that they have fuel surcharges. On partner airlines, such as Qatar, the surcharges can amount to upwards of $1,800 whereas Cathay’s own flights don’t incur any high surcharges, only airport taxes.
Unlike most US airlines, Cathay Pacific still prices its award tickets based on fixed charts. This makes it easy and predictable to calculate the price of an award ticket, and you won’t be subject to any sudden price fluctuations as long as there are award seats available.
The system is divided into different award charts, which makes it quite complicated. These are as follows:
Asia Miles uses a zone-based system for calculating the cost of an award ticket. The award prices listed in the chart above apply for one-way flights, and the cost of the flight is determined by the total flown distance of that leg. For instance:
For flights on Oneworld partners, there is no published chart. Instead, you’ll find a calculator on the Asia Miles website. The calculator is fairly difficult to use and doesn’t allow you to enter all of the possible airline/route combinations. Luckily, we've made a simple chart for you:
Note that the single-airline pricing (above) also applies when combining Cathay Pacific flights with one Oneworld partner airline. If your itinerary includes two or more Oneworld airlines, then the multi-carrier pricing applies (below).
Asia Miles also allows so-called mixed cabin redemptions. Unlike most other airline programs that calculate the cost of the highest cabin for the entire trip, with Asia Miles you only pay for the distance flown in each respective cabin as part of the itinerary.
For example:
JFK-LHR-SIN has a flown distance of 10,216 miles pricing it as 90k in Business Class and 135k in First.
The JFK-LHR leg has a distance of 3,451 miles and LHR-SIN is 6,765 miles. If we convert these as a percentage of the total miles flown, then:
In order to calculate the price in points, we’ll take the percentage of the distance flown and multiply them with the cost of the total distance of each respective cabin, and then add them together:
Cathay Pacific doesn’t take out fuel surcharges on its own flights, only the airport taxes. These can be calculated either directly via the search engine or on the Asia Miles website.
For flights on partner airlines, fuel surcharges are imposed. One notable exception is that British Airways flights redeemed through Asia Miles don’t incur the same high fuel surcharges of $1500+ but rather a lower amount of approximately $300-500. The only way to know exactly is to look up the flight segment via the search engine on the Asia Miles website.
Cathay Pacific has some of the strictest routing rules for award tickets.
The above rules apply for redemptions on Cathay Pacific flights and single-carrier Oneworld redemptions. Of course, Cathay has different rules for the last category, multi-carrier Oneworld redemptions.
Multi-carrier awards can offer some amazing redemption opportunities as they are priced based on the total distance flown, but the prices listed in the chart apply for round-trip travel. This means that you can book round-the-world itineraries for relatively reasonable rates. Multi-carrier redemptions may include up to 5 stopovers and must start and end in the same city. Most importantly, you must include at least two Oneworld airlines other than Cathay Pacific. For example, an itinerary with flights on both American Airlines and Qatar Airways.
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles award tickets can either be booked online or over the phone. Relatively simple itineraries can be booked online, whereas more complex itineraries, including those with stopovers, must be booked over the phone.
When looking for flights operated by Cathay Pacific, we recommend only using the search engine on the Asia Miles website as it offers better availability to its own members. In other words, more seats are available than if you had searched via American’s search engine, for instance.
If you’re looking at availability over the next months, we recommend you use the American Airlines Oneworld search engine, which features a very useful calendar feature. Best practice is to always double check the availability found on American's website with the Asia Miles website to make sure that the seats are bookable. If the itinerary isn’t bookable online, note the flight numbers and complete the booking over the phone.
Asia Miles generally doesn’t allow members to hold award seats but in some instances a supervisor may authorize an award hold while waiting for a points transfer to clear. Note that it can take up to 3 days for Amex points to clear, so that is an important consideration.
If you’ve read this far, this marks the half-way mark in our Hack School series, good on you! Next up will be Emirates Skywards.
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