Despite numerous devaluations over the years, the Cathay frequent flyer program is still worth a look. You can still redeem some awards at a lower cost than other programs, which is handy if you have transferrable points in programs such as American Express Membership Rewards.
With 100,000 Asia Miles up your sleeve, here’s what you could do.
1. When you think Qantas, consider Cathay
Cathay’s redemption rates are sometimes cheaper than Qantas Frequent Flyer, depending on the route and cabin class. If you have the choice of earning Qantas Points or Asia Miles (Cathay’s points currency), you may reach your goal quicker with the latter. The difference isn’t always huge but can add up over time. Here are a few examples:
Perth-Brisbane or Melbourne-Bali (or up to 2,750 miles flown)
| Economy | Business | |
| Qantas Points | 18,000 pts | 41,500 pts |
| Asia Miles | 15,000 miles | 33,000 miles |
Sydney-Singapore (or up to 5,000 miles flown)
| Economy | Premium Economy | Business | First | |
| Qantas Points | 25,200 pts | 51,300 pts | 68,400 pts | 102,600 pts |
| Asia Miles | 27,000 miles | 43,000 miles | 63,000 miles | 100,000 miles |
Sydney-Los Angeles (or up to 7,500 miles flown)
| Economy | Premium Economy | Business | First | |
| Qantas Points | 41,900 pts | 81,300 pts | 108,400 pts | 162,800 pts |
| Asia Miles | 40,000 miles | 55,000 miles | 89,000 miles | 135,000 miles |
Melbourne-London or Sydney-New York (or 7,501+ miles flown)
| Economy | Premium Economy | Business | First | |
| Qantas Points | 55,200 pts | 108,400 pts | 144,600 pts | 216,900 pts |
| Asia Miles | 47,000 miles | 80,000 miles | 115,000 miles | 170,000 miles |
Note that the main partner Cathay doesn’t have access to (where Qantas does) is Emirates. Conversely, Cathay members can earn and redeem miles on select Star Alliance airlines like Air Canada and Lufthansa, which Qantas members cannot.
Bringing it back to 100,000 Asia Miles, you could fly:
- Perth-Brisbane or Melbourne-Bali three times in Business Class one-way
- Sydney-Singapore one-way in Qantas or British Airways First Class
- Sydney-Los Angeles return in Economy or one-way in Business
- Melbourne-London return in Economy or one-way in Premium Economy
2. Fly to Hong Kong one-way Premium Economy and return in Business for 96,000 miles
Cathay has an extensive network from Australia. From 28 October 2024, there’ll be four daily flights out of Sydney, three from Melbourne, 11 weekly flights from Perth and ten weekly flights from Brisbane.
In Premium Economy, expect wider seats, more legroom and an enhanced food and beverage experience from Economy. A one-way award from Australia to Hong Kong is only 38,000 Asia Miles.
Business Class is now 58,000 miles one-way, so you’d need to stretch your budget to 116,000 miles for a return trip. Or, simply compromise and fly one-way Premium Economy and one-way Business for 96,000 Asia Miles!
3. Fly to Europe/US in Premium Economy for 75,000 miles (or stretch to Business for 110,000 miles)
If you want to go the distance, you can soar all the way to Cathay’s USA and European destinations from Australia for only 75,000 Asia Miles + fees and taxes. This is the highest distance bracket of Cathay’s award chart, so you can’t pay more than that for a one-way flight in Premium Economy.
Of course, if your budget allows, we recommend you scrape together 110,000 Asia Miles to get you Business Class for the entire journey. This option is harder to find but represents better value for your Asia Miles.
4. Fly American Airlines Business Class from Sydney to Los Angeles for 89,000 miles one-way
It can be very difficult to find award space in Business Class on any airline on nonstop flights between Australia and the US. However, if you are lucky enough to come across availability in Qantas or American Airlines Business Class, you’ll save over 19,400 points by redeeming an award through Cathay (89,000 miles) rather than Qantas (108,400 points).
6. Fly to Doha in a Qatar Airways Qsuite from 89,000 miles one-way
The Qsuite is arguably the world’s best Business Class product, and we are lucky to have it flying from Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. From Sydney and Perth, there’s the Airbus A380 Business Class instead.
You’ll pay 89,000 miles for one-way Business Class redemption from Perth, Adelaide or Melbourne. However, Sydney and Brisbane departures cost 115,000 miles, so you might as well fly all the way to Europe at that price.
Note that access to Qatar Airways redemptions may be limited to 119 days in advance when using Asia Miles.
7. Upgrade any Cathay flight (subject to availability)
With 100,000 Asia Miles, you could upgrade any Cathay flight up to Premium Economy, Business or First Class – subject to availability and the ‘one class’ upgrade rule. For Australia/Hong Kong flights, it costs:
- 21,000 Asia Miles to upgrade from Economy to Premium Economy
- 29,000 Asia Miles to upgrade from Premium Economy to Business
On the upper end of the scale, it costs 96,000 Asia Miles to upgrade from Business to First Class on Cathay’s ultra-long flights to destinations such as New York JFK.
Summing up
Cathay is one of our top five frequent flyer program recommendations for travellers in Australia (along with Qantas, Velocity, KrisFlyer and Qatar Airways/British Airways’ programs with Avios).
That’s partly due to their favourable medium- and long-haul redemption rates, especially compared to Qantas Frequent Flyer. In fact, the most you can pay for a one-way Cathay Business flight anywhere in the world (with up to two sectors, e.g. Sydney-Hong Kong-London) is 110,000 miles.
The current rates are a bit higher than before, but even then, Asia Miles still offers decent value across the board.
What has been your best-value redemption with Asia miles? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Supplementary images courtesy of Cathay.
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It’s a call centre from a nearby South East Asian country (the operators have a pseudo American accent) where seemingly every all centre operator is trained by the same, ill-informed trainers.
This means that if you ever need an answer to anything more than the absolute basics, you’re unlikely get it; rather they’ll just re-iterate information from their website (which you’ve often already read for yourself).
If you ever ask to speak to a supervisor, they’ll tell you they’re in a meeting (which I suspect is not true, because I’ve been told that they get punished if they’re not able to deal with a call on their own), and unless you get quite nasty, they repeatedly refuse to put you through.
And then after 45 minutes (no exaggeration!) they’ll finally put you through to a supervisor, who’ll have absolutely no power to answer your question or improve the situation.
I rang with actual QF flight numbers and dates (having already checked their availability on the QF website) and even after 3 goes the operator tried to convince me that I should be travelling on different flights!
The only reason i was even talking to her was that their website was not working properly on many different browsers.
That’s an hour of my life that I will never get back. First world problems I know, but GRRRRRR!!!
Consider yourself warned.
Hkg-Jfk 2 x biz – 2 x PE mid December 2019 and JFK – YVR 4 x biz just before xmas 2019.
Plenty of availability, looking forward to the 15hrs in biz from HKG to JFK.
Thanks for all the info on your website.
It has helped tremendously.
I got an AmEx Explorer card recently and received numerous points (100K?).
First, how do I find out how many points I’ve accumulated while on the AmEx website?
Second, how do I convert these points to Asia Miles?
Cheers
Rosemary
I had 39.000 expiring miles to redeem, so instead of flying directly to Shanghai, I chose to connect from HK. I was told that I needed to buy the most expensive Premium Economy ticket, in order to upgrade to business: so did I, and only then they told me that they had no more seats available…
So I tried to redeem my miles with some gadgets of their (very poor) catalogue, but the few interesting ones could not be delivered in Italy, as if Asia Miles had only customers from HK…
Then I asked to extend the expiration of my miles, in order at least to use them in my next trip to Asia, in 2019: absolutely not possible, without paying (as if I didn’t pay enough…).
As I wrote, this program is a serious fraud.
I still have these 40,000 miles on Asia Miles account I have no idea how to use.. I regret I didn’t covert Amex points into Emirates or Jal … or even Singapore Airlines.
What a scam…
Ric
Question that I have .. MEL – EU award ticket, would you prefer CA or SQ! I am deciding but having issues in getting open Business Class tkt on SQ (Star). Just started looking for CA (oneworld).
Thanks
I have always been a QFF man. But after following this website for the last 6 months, and spending 556000 QFF points return for my wife and I to travel to USA (on Cathay), I’m done with QFF!! So expensive, huge fuel surcharges, and limited availability on QF flights. For an extra 4000 points we could have flown around the world. Time for a change!!
Bring on Asia Miles!!!