Cathay Pacific announced yesterday that they are beginning service four times weekly to Manchester from December 8th.

Manchester is a useful second option outside of Heathrow if you’re not actually looking to travel to the south of the UK, and when airlines launch routes it’s a great opportunity to snag up otherwise hard-to-find award seats while availability is award open – in this case to the UK over the Christmas and New Year period.

This currently the case for this new route, with bookings (and points seats) available on the route as of yesterday. I searched for 2 (and more) seats from 8th December over Christmas, and every date the flight operates had at least two economy and two business class seats available for points redemptions.

Cathay Manchester Availability

The route will be operated by a 777-300ER with Economy, Premium Economy and Business Class – no First, unfortunately. For some reason there’s no Premium Economy availability (yet) with points. You can check out my reviews of their Business Class to Sydney, to London and their Premium Economy service.

The route comes in at 92,000 Qantas points one way for Business Class, and half that for Economy.

Given the Christmas period can be one of the hardest times to find seat availability to use points, and how great Cathay Pacific Business Class is, this is one to keep in the back pocket if you’re planning a trip to Europe over the holiday period.

Cathay Pacific to launch flights to Manchester, with points seat availability wide open over Christmas was last modified: April 11th, 2014 by Keith