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The Essential Guide to

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

One-way long-haul premium flights Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart

Updated on: December 11, 2024

Best ways to earn:

Canada:.
Transfer from RBC Avion at a 1:1 ratio.
Transfer from Amex MR at a 1:0.75 ratio.
Occasional 10-15% transfer bonus promotions.
Cathay World Elite® Mastercard® – powered by Neo .
.
US:.
Transfer from Amex US MR at a 1:1 ratio.
Transfer from Bilt Rewards at a 1:1 ratio.
Transfer from Capital One Miles at a 1:1 ratio.
Transfer from Citi ThankYou Rewards at a 1:1 ratio.
Occasional 15% transfer bonus promotions.
.
.

Best ways to redeem:

Cathay Pacific flights due to better award availability.
Very long-haul redemptions on Cathay Pacific.
Premium redemptions on Oneworld airlines.
Ultra-short and short redemptions within Asia .
Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award redemption.

Cathay Pacific is the flagship carrier of Hong Kong and is one of the founding members of the Oneworld alliance. It consistently ranks as one of world's top airlines and its network covers a vast number of destinations. Asia Miles was previously Cathay Pacific's rewards program until 2022, when the airline rebranded its membership program under its own name and adopted Asia Miles as its currency. Asia Miles can be redeemed for award flights on both Cathay Pacific and its partner airlines. Cathay Pacific Asia Miles are great for better access to Cathay Pacific award space, and also earlier access to premium award space on their partner airlines, like Japan Airlines. If you're feeling adventurous and want to maximize the value of your Asia Miles, then consider the lucrative Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart.

Earning Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

To start earning Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, you’ll need to first register for a Cathay Pacific member account, which can be done directly on Cathay Pacific's webpage.Note that Asia Miles will expire if there is no activity in your account for 18 months. However, as long as you earn or redeem miles during this period, your points will remain active.Let’s go over some of the best ways to earn Asia Miles.

1. Cathay Pacific Credit Cards

Cathay Pacific has one co-branded card in Canada and two in the US, although the US cards are currently not open to new applications.The Cathay World Elite® Mastercard® – powered by Neo is now the only co-branded Cathay Pacific credit card in Canada. The previously available RBC Cathay Pacific Visa Platinum, but this card was discontinued in Fall 2023.The card has an annual fee of $180 (CAD), and it comes historically with a welcome bonus of up to 30,000 Asia Miles, with a portion earned upon activating the card, and the second portion after meeting the minimum spend requirement.The Cathay World Elite® Mastercard® earns miles at the following rates:
  • 2 Asia Miles per dollar (CAD) spent on eligible Cathay Pacific purchases
  • 2 Asia Miles per dollar (CAD) spent on all eligible purchases outside Canada
  • 1 Asia Mile per dollar (CAD) spent on all other eligible purchases
The card also lets you earn extra Asia Miles through increased multipliers on spending at Neo’s partners across Canada. These offers can be found on Neo’s app.Up until Fall 2024, Synchrony bank offered the Cathay Pacific Visa Card and the Cathay Pacific Visa Signature Card in the US. We'll have to see what's in store for these cards come 2025.

2. Transferring from Other Loyalty Programs

Even though there aren’t too many Cathay Pacific co-branded credit cards, there are still several other credit cards that can be used to rack up Asia Miles, and, in fact, there are many loyalty points programs in Canada and the US that can be directly transferred to Asia Miles.You can transfer points from the following loyalty programs into the Asia Miles at the following rates:Banks:Hotels:From time to time, there may also be promotions offering bonus Asia Miles when transferring from select programs. In the past, we’ve seen transfer bonuses of anywhere from 10% to 30%.

3. Flying with Cathay Pacific and Partner Airlines

Although not the quickest way to grow your Asia Miles balance, you can earn Asia Miles by crediting any paid flights with Cathay Pacific or its partner airlines to your Cathay Pacific account.For flights with Cathay Pacific and its partner airlines you can use Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles calculator to determine how many miles you’ll earn on your next flight.The amount you’ll earn will depend on your routing and fare class. For example, a paid one-way flight from Hong Kong (HKG) to Toronto (YYZ), you can expect to earn anywhere from 3,000–9,000 Asia Miles in economy.Cathay Pacific has 26 airlines it currently partners with and with whom you can credit flights from. These are shown below:It is important to note that for flights with partner airlines, only certain fare classes and routes are eligible for earning Asia Miles. Each partner airline has their own set of eligible fare classes and routes.To know whether your flight is eligible, use the online Asia Miles Calculator and select your partner airline. The calculator will then display any eligible origin and destination pairings for that airline. Once it displays the results for a pairing, all  eligible routes and fare classes for the airline will be listed in the fine print just below.In the example above, if you’re flying economy class on an Air New Zealand from Auckland to Hong Kong on a paid flight in fare class Y, B, M, H, Q, V, W, or T, you’ll be eligible to earn Asia Miles. If you're flying in fare class S, G, or K, or on a different route from Auckland to Vancouver, unfortunately you wouldn't be eligible to earn any.

4. Buying Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

Cathay Pacific allows you to buy Asia Miles directly, but you can only do so at the time of making an award booking, and only if you already have at least 70% of the required Asia Miles for that booking.If you meet this criteria, you can purchase blocks of 2,000 Asia Miles for $60 (USD) until you have enough for the award flight.Purchased Asia Miles must be redeemed immediately, and following the award redemption, your account balance may not have more than 2,000 miles remaining.

5. Other Ways to Earn Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

Cathay Pacific offers Asia Miles when purchasing products or services through one of their many retail and travel partners. Although many are based in Asia, there are some internationally-recognized brands.For travel bookings, there are Agoda and Trip.com.For hotel stays at eligible Marriott Bonvoy brands, you can earn 2 Asia Miles per dollar spent (USD). At eligible  World of Hyatt brands, you can earn 500 Asia Miles per stay.Dining at specific restaurants in Hong Kong, Macao, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore will also earn you Asia Miles.It can be as simple as using a credit card linked to your Cathay membership profile, to booking through OpenRice table booking platform, or showing your Cathay membership QR code at the dining venue. In general, you can expect to earn 1 Asia Mile per 4 HKD spent.You can also earn Asia Miles with car rental companies, gas stations, insurance companies, specific in-person retail stores, and shopping online through Cathay Pacific’s online shopping portal.

Redeeming Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

While there are many ways you can redeem your Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, the most valuable way is to redeem them for flight rewards.Cathay Pacific Asia Miles opens up its booking calendar 360 days in advance, which gives it a slight advantage when trying to book award space on some popular Oneworld partners.

1. Flights with Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific uses a distance-based award chart when redeeming Asia Miles for Cathay Pacific flights.For clarity, Short Type 1 refers to flights that neither start nor end in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, or Sri Lanka, while Short Type 2 refers to flights that do.As with every airline loyalty program that has a distance-based award chart, you’ll get the most value out of your Asia Miles by redeeming them for flights that reach the upper limit of any given distance band.There's also great value to be found in redeeming Asia Miles for long-haul flights. Cathay Pacific currently offers flights from Hong Kong to Vancouver and Toronto, and the one-way award pricing on these routes is as follows:
  • Vancouver: 27,000 miles (economy), 50,000 miles (premium economy), 84,000 miles (business class)
  • Toronto: 38,000 miles (economy), 75,000 miles (premium economy), 110,000 miles (business class)
By using Asia Miles, you’ll also have greater access to Cathay Pacific premium award space. Cathay Pacific typically doesn't release much, if any, business or first-class award space to its partners. If you're aiming to fly with Cathay Pacific, your best option is to book using Asia Miles.Cathay Pacific First Class is a popular sought-after aviation experiences, and redeeming Asia Miles for this top-tier, world class cabin provides tremendous value. Cathay Pacific First Class – SeatOn the lower end, a flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo is under the 2,750-miles threshold, which means a ticket in Cathay Pacific First Class will only cost 43,000 Asia Miles.For a longer flight from Hong Kong to Europe or Los Angeles, in the 'Long' distance category, a Cathay Pacific First Class ticket would be bookable for 125,000 Asia Miles.Further, any one-way Cathay Pacific First Class flight that’s over 7,501 miles will cost a maximum of 160,000 Asia Miles, no matter how much above the distance threshold it ends up being.While you can’t add a stopover with an Asia Miles reward booking, you can add on another flight segment for no extra miles. In fact, you can even add on another flight in business class or economy class after the first class flight and the total price may in fact decrease, as Asia Miles calculates its mileage pricing using a weighted average of the distance flown in each class of service on an itinerary.

2. Flights with Partner Airlines

While there isn’t an award chart for redeeming Asia Miles for partner airlines award flights, you should expect all airline partner awards to cost 5,000 miles more than their Cathay Pacific awards counterpart.For example, a one-way business class flight from Chicago (ORD) to Tokyo (HND) on Japan Airlines is a total flight distance of 6,274 miles, which falls under the 'Long' distance category and should price out to 89,000 points (84,000 + 5,000), which it does.To help you figure out how many miles you’ll need for your desired route, you can easily search using Asia Miles’ dedicated award search.

3. Flight Upgrades

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles can also be redeemed for upgrades on Cathay Pacific flights. Upgrades are only possible to the next highest cabin class from your current booking. If there is no premium economy section on that plane, you may be upgraded directly from economy to business class.Similarly to booking award flights, there’s a published chart showing how many Asia Miles are required to upgrade from one cabin to the next.

4. Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart

If you’re looking to put together more complicated bookings, you can take advantage of Cathay Pacific’s Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart.Under this award chart, you can have up to five stopovers, two connections or layovers, and two open-jaws.In order to be applicable, your flights have to include at least two Oneworld alliance airlines and not include Cathay Pacific, OR have three or more Oneworld alliance airlines when one of them is Cathay Pacific.The maximum distance range for this type of booking is 50,000 miles, calculated by adding up all of the individual segments.The amount of Asia Miles required will be based off of the highest class booked for any single part of the itinerary. This means that if you have six economy segments and one First Class segment for a total of 12,000 miles, you’ll be charged 250,000 Asia Miles, based on the First Class segment.Comparatively, if you were to fly the same trip but with all the segments in economy, it would only cost 95,000 Asia Miles.The takeaway from this is that if you have a business class or first class flight on your itinerary, you’ll want to have as many segments in the same class as possible to get the most value out of the Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart.Unfortunately, when it comes to booking using the Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award Chart, the itineraries do need to be booked over the phone.Finally, it should be noted that the taxes and fees can be significant when booking with Asia Miles, depending on which airlines are on your itinerary.British Airways and Qatar Airways are among the airlines that have relatively high fuel surcharges on Asia Miles bookings, while Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, American Airlines, and LATAM seem to have more moderate surcharges, and Alaska Airlines, Aer Lingus, and Air New Zealand have none.Therefore, you can either choose exclusively from the latter set of airlines or originate your itinerary in one of the world’s jurisdictions that has regulated fuel surcharges to minimize your out-of-pocket expenses

5. Other Ways to Redeem Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

Redeeming Asia Miles for flight rewards will always be the best way to get the most value out of your miles. However, there are also other options available, as pictured below, in case you have no foreseeable plans to fly.For example, you can redeem Asia Miles through Cathay Pacific’s lifestyle awards online shop. As an example, a Kodak camera purchased through the shopping portal will cost you 1,199 HKD (~$218 CAD) or 27,220 Asia Miles, which yields a value of under 1 cent per point.You can also simply transfer your Asia Miles into another loyalty program, like Marriott Bonvoy, but you’ll have to redeem at a rate of 2 Asia Miles = 1 Marriott Bonvoy point, which is not a great value.Hotels and car rentals were previously available options, but it seems they have been phased out, as the booking portal is no longer operational.

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Status

Cathay Pacific's membership status program has four tiers, each status level granting its most loyal customers with a slew of benefits that can be found on Cathay Pacific’s website.All Cathay Pacific members start at the basic Green status tier. From the Green tier, you can climb to Silver, Gold, and the top-tier, Diamond.In order to reach the higher tiers, you’ll have to earn Status Points, which can be earned by flying with Cathay Pacific as well as with partner airlines. You can use Cathay Pacific’s Status Points calculator to determine how many Status Points you’ll earn on your next Cathay Pacific or partner flight.For example, a one-way Cathay Pacific flight in economy from Hong Kong (HKG) to San Francisco (SFO) would earn you between 25 to 70 Status Points, depending on the fare class you book.You’ll need to earn 300 Status Points to reach Silver elite status, 600 to reach Gold elite status, and 1,200 to reach Cathay Pacific’s Diamond status.As an example of these benefits, after earning 300 Status Points and reaching the Silver level, you’ll immediately have access to business class lounges, and you’ll automatically receive Oneworld Ruby status.Oneworld Ruby status, while not amazing, does come with priority check-in, preferred or pre-reserved seating, and priority standby and wait-listing on all Oneworld alliance airlines.Additionally, Cathay Pacific Gold will get you Oneworld Sapphire status, which grants you access to all Oneworld business class lounges, and Cathay Pacific Diamond will get you Oneworld Emerald status, giving you even more benefits, including First Class lounge access with Oneworld Airline alliance members.

Conclusion

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles are a great program for unlocking some amazing business class and first class flights. With a distance-based award chart, there’s a lot of value to be found, especially when flying Cathay Pacific First Class.What’s more, Asia Miles are fairly easy to earn with a variety of transfer partners in Canada and the US, as well as a co-branded credit card offered through Neo in Canada.With some careful research and planning, there are many lucrative ways to transform your Asia Miles into highly aspirational trips on some of the world’s best airlines at a spectacular value.

 

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