Cathay Pacific Asia Miles has some use to those in the points hobby given it’s one of the programs that allows you to book just about a full year in advance.

For this post, I’m not going to get into the details of the elite status aspect of the program and instead focus on the redemption side of the program.

A transfer partner of most banks

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles is a transfer partner of most bank programs, which makes it rather easy to accumulate points in a hurry. American Express, Bilt, Capital One, and Citi ThankYou all transfer to Asia Miles at a 1:1 ratio. Chase is the only major bank that does not have transfers to Asia Miles.

It can be useful to have many options to transfer points over to Asia Miles to top off your account for an award. But it also seems like the more options a program has for earning points, the quicker (or more vicious) the next devaluation hits. A double-edged sword for sure.

Asia Miles passes along fuel surcharges, but check out British Airways awards

This is a bit of a mixed bag. Cathay Pacific Asia Miles will pass along fuel surcharges to your award booking. Certainly it would be nice to not pay the fee, but think of it as a cash copay required to take your journey and don’t concern yourself too much about it being a “bogus” fee.

But–this is important–you should check out British Airways award flights. We’ve already discussed in detail how crippling those fuel surcharges can be. So it’s more than a little surprising what you’ll find knowing that you’ll have to pay fuel surcharges on awards with Asia Miles.

Here is what British Airways charges for their flight from New York JFK to London LHR in business class:

And what would Cathay Pacific charge for the same flight? How about 63,000 Asia Miles and $1,736HK (equivalent to about $223US). Would you pay 3,000 more miles to save over $700? Absolutely!

Not every single route will turn up the same magnitude of savings, but the fuel surcharges are much lower when you use Asia Miles. Whenever you have the thought to book an award flight on British Airways, you might want to take a look at what Cathay charges.

Asia Miles can book awards 360 days in advance

This is pretty much as close as it gets to booking awards almost exactly one year in advance. Being able to lock in an award at 360 days out is awesome, assuming you’re able to plan your own travel that far in advance. I, for one, feel relief knowing my travel can be locked down well in advance of the travel date.

In theory, that means that Asia Miles can also book those partner awards at 360 days out too. But it might be even before the award space exists with those partners. Still, it’s amusing if you can book travel on partners before members of those partners are able to book it themselves.

Award cancelation fees are on the higher side

Award cancel fees are painful with Cathay Pacific. Your options are to be charged either $120US or 17,000 Asia Miles per ticket. Personally, I’d rather pay the cash penalty as you’re not even getting one cent per point in value by paying the fee in miles.

If you’d prefer to save some money and still intend to take the flight at a later date, the change fee is cheaper ($50US or 7,500 Asia Miles). You can only change if there is still validity left on your ticket (up to one year from the original date of issue).

On the plus side, there is no additional no-show penalty to pay, so you could even cancel or change your flight after it departs and get your miles back after paying the fee.

Distance-based awards

Flights on Cathay Pacific

For award redemptions, Cathay Pacific doesn’t release a specific award chart but rather allows you to model out your price based on the routing on their website. This is the pseudo-award chart for flights solely on Cathay Pacific:

Based on my searching on the Asia Miles website, Type 1 includes Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam. Type 2 reflects all other countries.

Flights on partner airlines

Unfortunately, there is no posted award chart for partners either. A rough rule of thumb would be to add around 5,000 Asia Miles to the cost of the Cathay Pacific award to get the price of a partner award.

Here are two examples of pricing differences between flying Cathay Pacific and its partners. In both cases, there’s a 5,000 upcharge for partner awards.

Flight awards involving two or more oneworld partners

If you happen to be flying an itinerary that involves at least two oneworld airlines not named Cathay Pacific, you’ll be subject to an entirely different award chart.

You might be able to guess from the distance bands that this chart also serves as Cathay’s round-the-world chart. If you’re looking to use this for a round-the-world award, there are a few other allowances to keep in mind:

• Five stopovers are allowed on your journey
• Two transfers are permitted
• Two open-jaws are permitted

Additionally, the distance band you’ll end up in is the sum of the sector distance of all sectors in the itinerary. Sector distance is defined as the distance between the origin and destination airports. Based on this definition, if you have to go out of the way due to a non-stop between airports not being available, it won’t count against you.

Upgrades using miles

On top of award flights, you can also upgrade cash flights one level of service using your miles. This is only available when Cathay Pacific is both the marketing and operating carrier. These awards are subject to availability.

To be eligible to upgrade, you need to have booked the following fares:

• Economy to Premium Economy OR Economy to Business:
  • Flex fares,
  • Essential fares, or
  • Fare classes Y, B, H, K, M, L, V
• Premium Economy to Business:
  • Flex fares, or
  • Fare classes W, R
• Business to First:
  • Flex fares,
  • Essential fares,
  • Light fares, or
  • Fare classes J, C, D, P, I

You should expect to be likely waitlisted on these awards, which might clear a few days before departure… or not at all. Given the unreliable nature of the awards, I wouldn’t bank on it always being available for you. But if you are paying cash anyways (like an employer that purchased your flight), why not try?

Companion ticket awards

Just like the upgrade awards, these companion fares are only available for flights marketed and operated by Cathay Pacific. You might wonder why bother with companion tickets because the price appears more expensive than a flat out reward flight. Well, there’s a little more to it than that.

If you buy a cash roundtrip flight on Cathay, you can bring along a friend with you on the entire roundtrip for the price listed below. The flight distance is the one-way distance while the price in Asia Miles is the roundtrip price. That makes it a bit confusing, but other than that it’s not too bad. That makes a companion ticket potentially a decent savings over typical award travel if one person is committed to paying cash.

Companion tickets are only valid on the following fares:

• Business class: J, C, D, I, P
• First class: F, A

Technically, the award space pulls out of the same inventory as normal reward flights. However, you might get lucky and agents might “discover” some extra seats for you. I suspect sometimes having status with Asia Miles helps (it certainly wouldn’t hurt).

If you wanted to both purchase a flight and book a companion award at the same time, you might need to call up an agent to book a revenue flight but not pay, then phone up an Asia Miles agent to book the companion ticket, then go back and pay for the revenue flight.

What are the sweet spots?

Beyond booking some benefits booking British Airways awards and the potential value in companion awards as described above, there are a few other considerations for Asia Miles.

The longest awards… sort of

If your determination of a “sweet spot” correlates to the formula [award cost / distance], then you might have some amusement with the theoretical possibilities of Asia Miles. Take this business award on Cathay Pacific from Boston to Hong Kong:

And then tack on an extra segment from Hong Kong to Johannesburg:

Both journeys will cost you the same number of miles (110,000). Sure, if you had the intent on going all the way to South Africa going the long way around the Earth then this is a good deal. I’m not so sure that I would look forward to taking this journey, especially with the kids, and you’d have to hope that two long-haul awards have award space to make this trip possible. Thus it’s more of a theoretical exercise these days.

I’d feel differently about this award if free stopovers were possible with the program. But they’re not allowed on a one-way flight. While one “stopover” is allowed on a roundtrip, what the program seems to mean is that your destination on a roundtrip counts as the stopover.

Flying Cathay Pacific in first class

Don’t expect multitudes of extra award space when flying on Cathay Pacific and using Asia Miles. But, the program does make extra space available to its own members. Want to fly first class on Cathay? This is your best chance to do it.

Take this example of two first class seats being available between Los Angeles LAX and Hong Kong. We haven’t had the pleasure of flying in first class yet. Pretty much the only opportunity these days will be to use Asia Miles to book it. Most, if not all, first class award space is not bookable with partner programs.

Flying Cathay Pacific in business class

The extra award space Cathay Pacific makes available to its own members makes it quite helpful if you need to get to or from Asia. There are days when you have multiple options to travel on Cathay, as compared to no availability showing up bookable by partners. If you’re flying from LAX, SFO, or Vancouver YVR, paying only 84,000 miles to cross the Pacific isn’t all that bad these days.

Booking round-the-world business class flights

File this under yet another “theoretical” sweet spot. If you can find the time to truly maximize the round-the-world award and patient/lucky enough to find all the partner award flights, you’ll find you can get your money’s worth. Traveling up to 50,000 miles for 280,000 miles means you have plenty of flexibility on your journey on how you route yourself.

But, as mentioned previously, those fuel surcharges will be your responsibility. And those will add up with each flight you take. So while the miles price might be reasonable, just watch out for that cash copay.

Round-the-world awards are honestly on the way out. I think a big reason for that is the lack of partner availability in today’s environment. But it’s still technically possible to do it if you’re diligent with your planning and routing.

Lap infant awards are potentially the highest in the industry

Back when we flew internationally with an infant, we ended up sometimes paying a pretty penny to allow our child to sit in our lap. Without getting into the debate on the safety of the lap child, I can say it sometimes got expensive.

With most airlines, you would be forced to pay 10% of the cash price of the ticket. Say you found a flight for 75,000 miles in business class one-way. But if you want to bring your lap infant, you’d have to pay 10% of the cash fare, which could be thousands of dollars. A one-way flight is painfully priced high, and you might pay less if doing a roundtrip, but it’s still quite a dent. I’d say the rough average of what we paid for an infant was around $600 for the ticket.

The problem is that Cathay Pacific charges a different amount depending on the route you’re taking. Some routes might cost you 10% of the cash fare when the adults booked with points. If your flight touches the United States, expect it to cost you a whopping 25% of the cash fare. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of a cap on this lap infant fare. Truly painful stuff that would absolutely make me reconsider bringing a lap infant on Cathay.

How to Best Search for Availability?

If you’re looking for award availability, just head over to their flight awards website and see award availability within the calendar view. After entering your origin, destination, and class of business, just open up the calendar to view dates. The green icons mean there are multiple awards available on that day while the ugly brown color means availability is limited.

And, yes, the calendar does account for the number of passengers in your booking, which is nice. I actually think this is the most efficient way to search for space route by route. You don’t even need to log in to see the calendar (but you do need to log in to see the flight details beyond this point).

If your intention is flying Cathay Pacific, don’t bother checking partner websites to see what they say for Cathay. The recent trend is for programs to release more award space to its own members and Cathay Pacific is no exception to the rule.

Another consideration is using the free point.me tools to help search for awards.

Do Miles Expire?

Yes, miles expire 18 months after earning them if there is no activity on your account. However, any transaction involving adding or subtracting miles will extend your entire stash (except for transferring miles between accounts). The easiest approach is to just transfer the minimum 1,000 miles into your account from a bank’s transferrable currency.

Anything Else?

You can transfer miles for free from minors to their guardians. You can do so in increments of 2,000 miles, up to a maximum of 120,000 Asia Miles per year. I wish more programs offered this feature–not because I want to steal miles from my kids but because I don’t want them to expire. Your child’s earned miles are not exempt from expiring in the Asia Miles program, so consolidate them to make it easier to keep all the miles alive.