Which program is better for redemption on Cathay Auckland-Hong Kong route - Alaska miles or AAdvantage?

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I’m tempted to buy some Alaska Miles mainly for the Cathay Auckland-Hong Kong route, although I also like the look of the Australia-US with Qantas and Cathay.

I only had a 35% offer, probably no surprises as I’ve never credited anything to Alaska Miles or bought any miles.

My plan is to hang out for a 40% offer and buy a small amount of miles then, and hope that I am targeted in the future for a 50% offer. Hoping buying 30,000 for a one way is enough to trigger being targeted. Just wondering what people think?

Secondly, on the Auckland-Hong Kong route it seems there would only be a $16NZD difference for 10,000 points with Alaska Miles being 30,000 points and AAdvantage 40,000 so hardly seems worth signing up for another program. I’m assuming availability is similar so I’m part tempted to stick with buying AAdvantage miles, at least for this route.

Thirdly, I’ve only played around a bit with the AS award search engine but only get a day by day option to search? I clicked on Award calendar hoping it would give me a week or month to look at but - well it said no availability or something. Painful searching. Am I doing something wrong in terms of searching AS?

Fourth, given I quite like the routes from Oz to US with either Qantas or Cathay just wondering what availability generally looks like? I read Qantas is difficult even for Qantas members to snag Business seats so I’m thinking it is going to be even worse for partner miles. Not much point in buying miles if availability is awful.

I’d appreciate anyones views / experience?

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After googling (which I should have done first) I’ve discovered I need to search through BA (or JAL) and then call to book but despite availability it looks like those seats may not be released to AS and I have to HUACA each day…\r\n\r\nBrief look on the Oz-US looks like I have to click into each day to see which 55k is available and typically if typing in SYD-LAX it gives me SYD-MEL in business and MEL-LAX in economy.\r\n\r\nDoesn’t look promising for the routes I wanted to use CX for except AKL-HKG. I may just try calling up once a wk to see what availability is like on different dates that appear available via BA to see what the general answer is before buying AS miles. \r\n\r\nMind you AA’s availability AKL-LAX wasn’t great either. sigh

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