Booking an Asia Miles Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award

[Mattg]

The Qantas oneworld awards get a lot of attention on AFF, but Cathay Pacific seems to have an similar product known as the "oneworld mutli-carrier award". The basic rules appear identical, but the number of points required is significantly less than what Qantas charges!

According to the Asia Miles website:

This awards chart is applicable when you redeem a round-trip award ticket with an itinerary which covers:

• Two oneworld alliance airlines, where Cathay Pacific or Dragonair is not included; or
• Three or more oneworld alliance airlines when Cathay Pacific or Dragonair is included.

You can choose from all oneworld alliance airlines on one award with a maximum distance range of up to 50,000 miles.

...and...

You can make a maximum of five stopovers, two transfers and two open-jaws at either origin, en-route or turnaround point, subject to airline partners' terms and conditions.

For routings up to a total of 35,000 miles (which is the limit for Qantas oneworld awards) the prices are as follows:

• Economy: 130,000 miles (Qantas is 140,000 points)
• Business: 190,000 miles (Qantas is 280,000 points)
• First: 275,000 miles (Qantas is 420,000 points)

There is also an option to travel up to 50,000 miles, which Qantas doesn't have. Prices are:

• Economy: 150,000 miles
• Business: 220,000 miles
• First: 335,000 miles

Has anyone here ever booked one of these?

I imagine that the Business class award would be a pretty attractive option if you had a credit card that could transfer to Asia Miles.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Unfortunately my CX account has 0 miles in it which makes it difficult to see availability and to test it out.

 

[scottz95]

Has anyone here ever booked one of these?

I imagine that the Business class award would be a pretty attractive option if you had a credit card that could transfer to Asia Miles.

Thats actually an excellent reward redemption especially considering the taxes tacked onto just about every QF redemption. Generally speaking cards that push to Asia Miles dont generally tend to have the most attractive transfer rates though:

• Westpac Altitude - 2A:1AM
• AMEX Rewards - 1MR:1AM

Other than an RTW, do they have any other sweet spots on their award charts? Seems like its better to push all OW points straight to AA or if QF, potentially Alaska due to their awesome CX J and F charges from AUS to USA.

 

[docjames]

Can you start and end ex-AU or only ex-HKG?

 

[Mattg]

Thats actually an excellent reward redemption especially considering the taxes tacked onto just about every QF redemption. Generally speaking cards that push to Asia Miles dont generally tend to have the most attractive transfer rates though:

• Westpac Altitude - 2A:1AM
• AMEX Rewards - 1MR:1AM

Other than an RTW, do they have any other sweet spots on their award charts? Seems like its better to push all OW points straight to AA or if QF, potentially Alaska due to their awesome CX J and F charges from AUS to USA.

Yes, there are some other sweet spots with CX. One of my favourites is QF Premium economy and Business class flights just under 7,500 miles in length. The cost is 72,000 miles return in Premium economy or 120,000 miles return in Business. (First class 180,000 miles return.) Flights from Sydney to Santiago, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dubai all fall into this category. As do MEL-DXB and BNE-LAX.

https://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redeem/charts

Can you start and end ex-AU or only ex-HKG?

I don't see any reason that you would need to start in Hong Kong. In fact, there is no requirement to even set foot on a CX aircraft.

 

[zoom&boom]

Just wondering if there is “How to book an Asia Miles One World MultI-Carrier Award“?
I’ve searched CX forum and can’t find a ”how to” guide.

Do all flights have to be available or are you able to add flights at a later stage eg QF.
These awards seem to be great value and I’m sure there are some sweet spot.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mattg]

There is an old thread about this award, but that was more somebody asking questions about their specific itinerary than a general "how to" thread.

There is also some info about this award here: How to Book a Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Round-the-World Award

To answer your question, you are only allowed to change the date or flight number after booking (which you can do by calling Asia Miles and paying a small fee). Airline and routing changes are not permitted. So, you can't add sectors later like you can with Qantas Frequent Flyer.

 

[zoom&boom]

There is an old thread about this award, but that was more somebody asking questions about their specific itinerary than a general "how to" thread.

There is also some info about this award here: How to Book a Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Round-the-World Award

To answer your question, you are only allowed to change the date or flight number after booking (which you can do by calling Asia Miles and paying a small fee). Airline and routing changes are not permitted. So, you can't add sectors later like you can with Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Ok Thanks. I’ll check it out.

 

[SteveLL]

I would not recommend using Asia Miles if it needs to be done over the phone. Due to cost cutting, they have unofficially shut down a few call centres and last time when I tried to reach them over the phone via a number of different numbers, the call didn’t even get connected because the phone numbers published on their websites are not even valid...I did some research online and found this was a common issue even for users in USA...

I did reach out to them via social media and they didn’t answer my question as to why the numbers published on their website was invalid and instead referring me to online services ...

 

[zoom&boom]

I would not recommend using Asia Miles if it needs to be done over the phone. Due to cost cutting, they have unofficially shut down a few call centres and last time when I tried to reach them over the phone via a number of different numbers, the call didn’t even get connected because the phone numbers published on their websites are not even valid...I did some research online and found this was a common issue even for users in USA...

I did reach out to them via social media and they didn’t answer my question as to why the numbers published on their website was invalid and instead referring me to online services ...

Wow. OK thanks for that. I’ll try a mini online award then.

 

[Mattg]

Has anyone booked one of these awards recently?

It appears that it is now possible to book these online (either using the Asia Miles or Cathay websites), however you get an error message if your multi-city award includes more than four cities. So you would still need to call for more complicated itineraries. The website also doesn't show any AA availability, but does for Oneworld airlines other than American Airlines.

The Asia Miles oneworld multi-carrier award still seems to be excellent value, although the limit of 8 flights (max 5 stopovers + 2 additional transits) could be... well, limiting. At least you can get 2 additional open jaws, which don't seem to count towards the stopover limit.

Having another read of the rules, I'm also a little confused by this wording:

1. A oneworld Multi-carrier Award is applicable for:
   1. two oneworld alliance airlines, when Cathay Pacific is not one of your selected carriers; or
   2. three or more oneworld alliance airlines, when Cathay Pacific is one of your selected carriers.

I assume it is possible in practice to book a Oneworld multi-carrier Award using more than two oneworld airlines when CX is not used. This is the case with the other equivalent Oneworld awards on other airlines, and in practice the CX website will even price an itinerary that uses 3 or 4 Oneworld airlines (none being Cathay) at the Oneworld multi-carrier award level. But that's not what the rule actually says.