If you want to redeem a oneworld award ticket for a trip back to China, in North America you can use American Airlines (AA) miles or British Airways (BA) Avios. Among oneworld carriers flying between the U.S. and China/Hong Kong are AA, Japan Airlines (JL), and Cathay Pacific (CX).
In North America, it is very easy to earn AA miles. Citi’s co-branded AA credit cards often come with a 50,000-mile welcome bonus, and last year the Citi AA Executive card even offered an eye-popping 100,000-mile signup bonus. In addition, if you had the Barclays-issued US Airways co-branded credit card, those US miles were converted into AA miles this year. But after accumulating so many miles, many people still complain that they are hard to use. So is there any way to find peak-season award tickets back to China?
In How to Book Peak-Season Award Tickets to China? (Star Alliance Edition), we mentioned that searching one to two weeks before departure often makes award space easier to find. Does the same trick work for oneworld flights?
Let’s do a quick experiment. We’ll look at flights from New York and Los Angeles to Hong Kong for late June and early July: one search on March 24, and another search today. We used BA’s website to search award space and compared the results.
Los Angeles to Hong Kong
Here is the award availability as searched on March 24:
From LA, there was no economy availability, and there was no business or first class either. The only thing left was premium economy, which cannot be booked with AA miles, so at that point AA was basically not useful here.
What about searching the same date today? Here are today’s results:
As you can see, not only is economy easy to book, but there is also very solid business class availability. Keep in mind that this business class seat costs only 55,000 AA miles. If you can get the signup bonus from either a US or AA card, you would only need to spend a little more to reach 55,000 AA miles. And if you are after the most luxurious experience, Cathay Pacific first class—one of the best in the industry—costs only 67,500 AA miles:
Once you solve the transpacific segment, the rest is much easier. You can either add a same-day Cathay Pacific or Dragonair flight from Hong Kong to a city in mainland China, or spend a few days in Hong Kong and then use BA miles to book a flight from Hong Kong to mainland China.
New York to Hong Kong
Here is what we found on March 24:
It looked a little better than Los Angeles, but there were no nonstop flights.
So what does it look like today?
Economy space is more limited, but there is a ton of business class availability. First class is a bit scarcer, but you can still find seats:
Conclusion:
Cathay Pacific has one of the best first class products in the world. So how far in advance should you book Cathay Pacific award tickets? There is a classic rule of thumb in the miles-and-points world: 11 months or 11 days. In our example, you can see that about one week before departure, Cathay releases a huge amount of award space, whether in economy, business, or first class. As long as seats remain unsold within the last week before departure, Cathay will often release them as award seats. Therefore, for Cathay and also for the Star Alliance award bookings we discussed earlier, do not assume that “the earlier you book, the easier award tickets are to find.” Booking close to departure is often the best strategy, especially for business and first class.
Related article: How to Book Peak-Season Award Tickets to China? (Star Alliance Edition)