A few months ago I finally redeemed some of my points for business class lie flat seats on Cathay Pacific to Thailand. The only time I have redeemed miles were for coach flights domestically and to the Caribbean. Yes I know that you should only use points for Business and first class because it makes the points worth more.
I was pretty sure I read that I could book a award flight with Cathay Pacific before transferring my points over to their Asia Miles. I was wrong. I believe they told me I needed something like 70-90% of the points in the account to book an award flight. I don’t remember the exact percentage because I did this back in March. I also had to call to book because I wanted a stopover and could not do that online. Dealing with Asia Miles on the phone can be difficult. I had to call a few times to get the right person that knew what they were doing. The Points guy has a good blog on redeeming Asia Miles. Though since I booked, Asia Miles has changed their award chart.
I used Award Hacker to see what would be the best way to get to Thailand for me. There were two reasons how I ended up going with Cathay Pacific. The first reason was because we had more Amex points than SPG and I wouldn’t have enough SPG points to book us both on Japan airlines or through Alaska airlines. The second reason I chose Cathay Pacific was because they fly out of Boston (where I live) to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok. After looking up award hacker, it was going to cost us 145,000 asia miles round trip for each one of us. I had 135,000 Amex points and my wife had 105,000 Amex points that transfer 1-1. That put us 50,000 points short. I transferred 40,000 SPG points which gave me 50,000 Asia Miles. For every 20,000 SPG points you transfer to an airline, you receive a bonus of 5,000 miles. By redeeming a total of 290,000 asia miles and a business class seat costs at least $5,300 round trip on Cathay Pacific, the value I received for each point was 3.66 cents per point. That is a decent value.
Back to when talking with Asia miles. Somehow they could not give me a stopover in Hong Kong on the way there. I tried different people and different ways to get it done. My guess is that they don’t know how to think outside the box and their program was just not allowing a stopover on those certain dates on that route. I settled with a stopover in Hong Kong on the way back.
One thing that is great about Cathay Pacific business class is that they have a lie flat pitch of 81 inches. I am 6’4″ and that will be good for me.
I will be going on this trip soon and I want to get as much done as we can since I have never been to Asia. Yes it is the Monsoon season but we scheduled it for a time that her family will also be in town. Hopefully I write about it right after we get back. haha. We will be going to Bangkok, Phuket, Krabi, Chiang Mai and Hong Kong.
My mission for a future trip to Thailand will be acquiring points to get me on Japan Airlines so that I can stop over in Tokyo. I have been dying to go to Japan.
Here are a couple youtube videos on Cathay Pacific business class in case you don’t know much about their business class.
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