Make no mistake: Hong Kong is a city you must see, and there aren’t many better ways to get there than with Cathay Pacific. The city is in the midst of change, but it’s still one of the safer places on earth and Cathay’s seats certainly haven’t fallen out of fashion, particularly in business and first class. At the moment, the airline has released an amazing array of award availability, allowing you to cash in your miles for business or first class between the USA, Europe and Hong Kong. What’s not to love?
You know how they always say “see something, say something” in airports – this is the same thing, but with points. “See space, book space” is the way to go here. Unlike booking cash tickets, miles bookings can be cancelled or change for double digit numbers, or nothing at all, and all your points are refunded as long as you cancel well in advance. For these two reasons, if you see something you want to take advantage of, lock it in ASAP, while it’s there.
Amazing Cathay Pacific Availability
Our friends NoMasCoach posted in article in pursuit of their namesake highlighting that there’s been a huge dump of award availability between New York JFK and Hong Kong, which prompted searches from all over, and it turns out – there’s award space to Hong Kong from all over! We’re seeing the best availability for summer and fall of 2020, though there are plenty of other options too.
From each city, think: July, August and September. Here’s just a few cities which have lots of seats available for you to redeem points. Bear in mind, it can be worth finding a cheap flight to get to one of these cities, since you’ll be flying direct to Hong Kong from there…
New York – Hong Kong
San Francisco – Hong Kong
Chicago – Hong Kong
Los Angeles – Hong Kong
Washington DC – Hong Kong
Paris – Hong Kong
London – Hong Kong
This is just an example of how many seats are being dumped on any given date. You can find seats for the whole family, on all these routes with far greater availability than normal. Intriguingly, Paris has an elusive first class seat available almost any day in July or August, which makes for a fun ride!
You can book Cathay Pacific flights using Asia Miles points, or from a variety of Oneworld airlines, like American or British Airways miles. If you don’t yet have any of those, there are so many credit cards from which you can convert points into one of these airlines. Basically, if you have Amex, Citi, Chase or Capital One points, you’ll be able to book these by transferring any of those points to a Oneworld airline points transfer partner like AsiaMiles or British Airways Executive Club.
The best main points currencies to use to book are Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, which is a transfer partner of Amex and Citi, British Airways Avios, which is a transfer partner of all four major banks, and American Airlines AAdvantage miles. Simply search online using the website of the points you’ll be using, or call the airline who’s points you’ll be using and let them know which flights you’d like to book.
Good to know: there’s currently a 40% bonus transferring Amex Points (USA) to Avios, so even if British Airways rates to book these flights are typically higher, this will greatly offset those rates…
Searching for these flights is easiest using the British Airways website, and if flights are available on the BA site, they’ll be available for any partners to book as well, like American, JAL, Qantas, Finnair and others. British Airways typically has availability further into the year than others, which is the only caveat there. Whichever points you use to book, it’s amazing to find this kind of availability.
Good article, which site did you use to find the CX’s award availability as shown?
I used British Airways.
I’ve decided to wait for the October 2020 to open up due to school vacations and weather creating potential problems………I’m hoping to use Alaska miles so the question is once I see availability on BA how long before they become available on Alaska??