Cathay is a very interesting frequent flyer program which most Australian points collectors are likely to be less familiar. But it should be in your box of tricks, due to the great value you can get out of Asia Miles for around the world flights.
Considering Asia Miles can be earned relatively easily through American Express Membership Rewards, ANZ Rewards and Westpac Altitude Rewards, there are some good value opportunities here for using your points.
If you’re completely new to Asia Miles, then start with our intro guide here. This guide will focus on how to use Asia Miles on an around the world trip, primarily in Business or First Class – but there’s also value to be had with Economy redemptions too.
For a comparable guide to Qantas around the world redemptions, check out our guide here →
The basics: Asia Miles is a part of oneworld
oneworld is a strong alliance of around 13 member airlines, including Qantas. Here’s the full list:
- American Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- Finnair
- Iberia
- Japan Airlines
- Malaysia Airlines
- Qantas Airways
- Qatar Airways
- Royal Air Maroc
- Royal Jordanian
- S7 Airlines
- Sri Lankan Airlines
LATAM Airlines left Oneworld in 2020 and Alaska Airlines will join as a 14th member of Oneworld by the end of this year.
And Asia Miles is a points transfer partner of:
- American Express Membership Rewards
- Westpac Altitude Rewards
- ANZ Rewards
- The Citi Prestige Mastercard
Getting into Asia Miles around the world redemptions
There is no specific award chart for around the world redemptions with Asia Miles, however, the oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart is the chart you need to refer to for around the world redemptions. It applies when you redeem a round-trip award ticket with an itinerary which covers:
- Two oneworld alliance airlines, where Cathay Pacific (CX) or Cathay Dragon (KA) is not included; or
- Three or more oneworld alliance airlines when Cathay Pacific or Cathay Dragon is included.
This might be slightly more limiting than the comparable Qantas award, as only up to two oneworld partners can be included if you don’t have Cathay Pacific in your itinerary.
However, this is not a major problem for us in Australia as Cathay Pacific flies to all major Australian cities and as part of an around the world trip, it’s not that inconvenient to have Hong Kong as a major hub.
Here is the award chart (as of July 2020):
And the rules, in a nutshell:
- You must redeem a roundtrip award ticket.
- Your itinerary must include two Oneworld airlines not including Cathay Pacific or Cathay Dragon, or three or more Oneworld airlines including Cathay Pacific or Cathay Dragon.
- The maximum distance range is up to 50,000 miles.
- You can have a maximum of five stopovers, two transfers, and two open jaws either at the origin, en-route, or the turnaround point.
- A oneworld Multi-carrier Award does not offer travelling in Premium Economy Class.
If you can maximize the 5 stopovers and 2 open jaws, you can essentially plan a trip around the world.
The major advantage of this Asia Miles redemption over Qantas’ equivalent is that it is far cheaper on a number-to-number basis!
Qantas allows an around the world itinerary up to 35,000 miles, but charges 318,000 Qantas Points in Business Class, and 455,000 in First Class.
For a similar distance, Asia Miles only charges 210,000 in Business and 300,000 miles in First class for distances up to 35,000 miles.
Comparing Qantas to Asia Miles, this is a whopping 155,000 points saving for First Class! So is there a catch? Not really, but it is harder to earn Asia Miles than Qantas Points in Australia (and transfer rates from credit card programs might be higher), so take that into consideration.
An example itinerary
In the example below, you could have stopovers in
- Hong Kong
- San Francisco
- Santiago
- Frankfurt
- Doha
This routing comes in at 37,262 miles which is more than the distance Qantas would permit for their comparable round the world redemption, and costs less.
Now, here are the limitations
- You can have up to 5 stopovers
- You can have up to 2 open-jaws (where you arrive into one city, but depart from another)
- According to the rules you can only have 2 transits. This means if you need to use short-haul connecting flights to get to non-hub destinations, you can only have up to 2 in your itinerary, otherwise it will be considered as a stopover. This restriction is actually more onerous than Qantas, who allow for up to 2 transfers at any one city
- To use this chart, you must use at least two oneworld partners
- You can’t use more than two oneworld partners without including Cathay Pacific or Cathay Dragon
- You can’t include Cathay Pacific’s non-oneworld partners such as Air China or Alaska Airlines (until the latter becomes part of Oneworld).
Other than these few limitations, it can be great value if you maximise the 5 stopovers, 2 transits and 2 open jaws – if you do you can potentially visit up to 9 cities with much lower miles than required with Qantas Frequent Flyer.
To make things a bit easier, you can use the Asia Miles’ Award finder and type in your itinerary and see how many miles you will need, or do the same via gcmap.com.
How do I make a booking? How much are taxes?
For tips and tricks for making Asia miles redemptions, check out this dedicated guide.
Asia Miles does impose fuel surcharges and taxes on their awards, so the usual tactics to minimise these would apply – these include avoiding high tax departure cities such as London or Frankfurt, and airlines like British Airways.
Taxes and fees should be comparable to if you used Qantas Points for the same flights.
Summing up – Asia Miles multi-carrier awards
These have to be redeemed over the phone with Asia Miles, and – big caveat – I am yet to redeem for one, so don’t have any personal experience to share with booking. Yet.
That said, on paper these seem like an excellent choice for holders of points balances that can be transferred to Asia Miles, and who wish to travel on a lengthy around the world itinerary in Business or First Class.
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Hi,
An update for you. I had 240,000 points in my Asia Miles account that was expiring end of March 2023. I tried every month for future 12 months to redeem a business class ticket and there were none available. (redemption flights are not available). I was given the chance to allow them to expire and then given a chance to get them back by redeeming from 2 partners 10 000 points within a specific periods. No e-mail to back it up, just the phone call. I said what is to say I spend more points and still cannot redeem? They said that may happen as they are not issuing redemption flights. Pointless and I must say against Australian law.
Question – If I was to book a First Class RTW and the routes does not have First and only business class, do the points reduce to the business class rate or the full first class mileage charged for the RTW ticket?
You’ll be charged at the First Class rate even if there is only one First Class flight and the rest are Business.
Hello,
Pardon me if I sound like complete idiot.
Questions on asia miles oneworld multi-carrier award:
1) are surface sectors included in total mileage, i.e. if within my itinerary, I had LAX-JFK, then GIG-ZRH, would the distance between JFK & GIG be included in my total mileage to calculate my oneworld award zone?
2) using the above example, would the JFK-GIG surface sector be considered 1 or 2 stopovers?
3) can I the ultimate destination on my ticket be in a different country to the original origin?
Appreciate any help on this. I can’t get clarity from asiamiles terms & conditions on these questions.
Hi Grant Wootton
Great series of guides on CX Keith. Howver I think you ought to consider changing this article’s difficulty rating. One World Multicarrier redemptions are a long flight from Easy 🙂
Haha agreed! Fixed.
I feel that this is ignoring the fact that Qantas points are MUCH easier to get than these.. E.g. if you convert from bank to Asia miles you need ~2x the points.. By the time you factor in the conversion you will need to have earned a lot more points than if you had just gone w Qantas points.
May want to clean up that title.”Save a thousands of points”
Thanks Phil!
Hey there,
I am looking at the example itinerary that you have provided and comparing it to the rules. The rules say that you must have a round trip redemption. The itinerary provided doesn’t include one? How would this work then?
Good article but oh my god that was a lot of work actually booking the ticket. Difficulty with availability not showing, and the agent waiting until absolutely everything was done before telling me that you cannot open-jaw at final return destination. So many times I was put on hold. But, booked MEL-HKG-CMB-DOH-JNB-LHR-MAD-JFK-YVR-SYD-MEL for 2x pax for 380,000 points and around $3,000 in taxes all in J except for MAD-JFK unfortunately…
Weirdly, I’m stopping in HKG, CMB, JNB, LHR, JFK and YVR which by my count is six but perhaps LHR is counted as o/j? Anyway, epic trip and I’m looking forward to it
Thanks for your website, great work!
Although counterintuitive, apparently you can’t use Asia miles to fly on Cathay Pacific?
I just spent two hours on the phone with 4 different agents that could not (or would not) price out an award for me.
The two agents that didn’t hang up on me advised that they could not price out an award ticket to fly DEN-LAX-HKG-PVG. They told me that a one way award ticket cannot have two stopovers. I tried to explain the difference between a stopover and a connection (or transfer as they were calling it) and there was no making them understand.
What was even more frustrating was the fact that there are no published routing rules for the program in their terms and conditions. They just told me they could not ticket the itinerary.
They advised this ticket would not fall under a standard award or a one world award ticket. Their only option to get from DEN to Shanghai would be all AA via LAX.
Not trying to rant, but couldn’t find anything else online regarding similar experiences so I thought I would share….
Hi,
Same here. I’m trying to book a one way ticket with 2 transit. I was told the same thing. I just can’t have two stopover. I was able to pull up T&C and ask him to read it. He agreed it’s just stopover, not transit. But the system didn’t let him to price it. Did you have any luck at all? Thanks.