Finally Redeemed Miles for Business Class

 

 

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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