Convert Points to Asia Miles with a 10% or 15% Bonus

Until January 31, 2023, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles is offering a 10% or 15% bonus whenever you convert your credit card points into Asia Miles under the new “More Miles More Rewards” promotion.

Asia Miles had also offered similar bonuses back in September 2022, so it’s great to see this promotion making a return again so soon after its last appearance.

Let’s take a closer look at all the sweet spots, which are now 10% or 15% sweeter than usual, that you can benefit from.

Register for the Promotion

In order to benefit from the 10% or 15% bonus, you’ll need to register beforehand. Simply head to this page on the Asia Miles website, enter your first and last name, membership number, and email address, and you’re all set.

You’ll get a 10% bonus if you convert up to 20,000 Asia Miles (prior to the bonus), and a 15% bonus if you convert 20,000 Asia Miles or more.

Keep in mind that you need to have some sort of activity in your Asia Miles account every 18 months to prevent your miles from expiring. As long as you earn or redeem at least one Asia Mile every 18 months, your expiration date will reset.

Now is as good of a time as ever to convert credit card points into Asia Miles, especially with Hong Kong reopening to tourism. 

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Conversion Ratios

The major points programs and optimal transfer ratios that allow you to earn Asia Miles are as follows:

• American Express Canada Membership Rewards: 1,000 MR points = 750 Asia Miles

• American Express US Membership Rewards: 1,000 US MR points = 1,000 Asia Miles

• RBC Avion: 1,000 RBC Avion points = 1,000 Asia Miles (must convert a minimum of 10,000 RBC Avion points)

• HSBC Rewards: 25,000 HSBC Rewards points = 8,000 Asia Miles

With the 15% bonus in place, these ratios are therefore boosted to the following levels until January 31, 2023:

• Amex MR: 1,000 MR points = 863 Asia Miles

• Amex US MR: 1,000 US MR points = 1,150 Asia Miles

• RBC Avion: 1,000 RBC Avion points = 1,150 Asia Miles

• HSBC Rewards: 25,000 HSBC Rewards points = 9,200 Asia Miles

Among the Canadian financial partners, RBC Avion is usually considered to be the “best” way to accumulate Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, followed by Amex MR (mainly because MR points can also be transferred to other programs at a better 1:1 ratio) and then HSBC Rewards.

If you have US credit cards issued by Citi or Capital One, then those points conversions would also be eligible for this 10% or 15% Asia Miles bonus.

Meanwhile, the scope of this promotion appears to only include transfers from credit card partners and not hotel partners, so it doesn’t seem like Marriott Bonvoy conversions to Asia Miles would be eligible.

Note that the promotion is explicitly limited to converting credit card points to Asia Miles, and excludes the miles you might earn as part of a welcome bonus or on regular purchases on the RBC Cathay Pacific Visa Platinum. Incidentally, this also makes it strictly optimal to use the RBC Avion Visa Infinite over the RBC Cathay Pacific card on your purchases this month, since you’re effectively earning 1.1 or 1.15 Asia Miles per dollar spent by doing so with this promotion in place. 

Typically, points transfers from Amex US MR to Asia Miles have been instantaneous; meanwhile, transferring from the Canadian currencies has always resulted in a delay of 3–5 business days.

You’ll also want to make sure that the names and addresses on both the sending and receiving accounts match with each other, as there have been several data points on RBC Avion transfers, in particular, being delayed due to mismatches in the systems.

The promotion page specifies that the bonus miles will be credited to your Asia Miles account within 8–10 weeks of the transfer. In practice, it should take less time than that, but this likely means that you wouldn’t be able to make a booking with your bonus miles immediately after initiating the transfer. 

What Are the Best Sweet Spots?

The 10% or 15% conversion bonus makes some of Asia Miles’s best sweet spots even more compelling.

As a reminder, here is the Asia Miles award chart for standard one-way awards. Importantly, a one-way award may consist of at most two segments – this limits your ability to customize the routing and restricting your journey to the major Oneworld hubs.

As a result, many of Asia Miles’s sweet spots are largely concentrated on flying in premium cabins with Oneworld airlines, some of which happen to be among the world’s best.

If your journey solely involves Cathay Pacific flights, then it’ll be subject to the award chart above.

Meanwhile, if there is a single partner airline involved, you’ll get charged 5,000 more Asia Miles than the above chart for economy, premium economy, and business, and 10,000 more Asia Miles than the above chart for First Class (the exception is the Medium distance zone for partners, which now requires 61,000 and 82,000 miles for business and First Class, respectively).

One of the best uses of Asia Miles is to redeem them for point-to-point long-haul flights within the Oneworld network when the pricing is favourable compared to other Oneworld mileage currencies.

For example, you can redeem 61,000 Asia Miles + $120 (CAD) for a flight from Stockholm–New York on Finnair business class. With a 15% conversion bonus, this would’ve been equivalent to only 54,000 RBC Avion points or Amex US MR points. 

In comparison, British Airways Avios would’ve charged 65,000 Avios and much more in taxes for the same flight, while Alaska Mileage Plan would’ve levied 70,000 miles.

There’s a mixed and multitudinous range of even more compelling sweet spots hidden within the Asia Miles program, so be sure to play around with the search engine and figure out what kinds of creative routings may be booked.

Conclusion

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles’s “More Miles More Rewards” campaign is offering a blanket 10% or 15% bonus on all incoming credit card points transfers until January 31, 2023. Be sure to register for the promotion before transferring your points into the program.

With three financial partners in Canada (and even more in the US) allowing you to earn Asia Miles, this promotion is a great opportunity to top-up your balance and accelerate your progress towards booking a memorable trip in the future using one of the program’s many sweet spots.