Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Award Booking Instructions

Often considered one of the best airlines in the world, Cathay Pacific is based in Hong Kong and flies to over 85 cities around the world. While this carrier is well loved among travelers for its top-of-the-line first-class product, Cathay Pacific provides an excellent experience for customers in all cabin classes. Plus, the airline operates its own frequent flyer program, known as Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, which allows members to earn rewards miles and redeem those miles for award flights (as well as for other types of awards).

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles is definitely a program worth paying attention to, even if you don’t ever plan on going to Hong Kong. The program is a transfer partner of some of the major credit card rewards programs, including American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Brex, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards. And, since Cathay Pacific is a member of Oneworld Alliance, you can both earn and redeem Cathay Pacific miles with any Oneworld airline.

If you aren’t familiar with how frequent flyer programs work, it can be difficult to navigate the process of purchasing an award flight. So, in this article, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about booking an award flight through Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, including how to sign up for the program, how to earn miles and how to book award flights.

Joining Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

In order to either earn or redeem miles through the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program, you first need to be a member of the program. So, if you haven’t already, you can join Asia Miles by visiting the Cathay Pacific website and clicking the “Sign in / up” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

You’ll be redirected to a new page, where you can sign in to an existing Asia Miles account if you already have one. If you don’t already have an account, click the “Sign up now” button toward the right side of the page.

From there, you’ll need to provide and verify your phone number and provide some other personal information, including your name, date of birth and email address.

Once you’ve entered your information correctly, you can create your Cathay Pacific Asia Miles account. You’ll receive a unique account number that you’ll need to earn miles and to sign in to your account.

How To Earn Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

As a member of the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program, you’re eligible to earn miles, which can later be redeemed for awards. There’s a multitude of ways to earn miles through the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program. However, certain earning methods are much more effective than others.

In the following sections, we’ll look at some of the most effective ways to earn Cathay Pacific miles so that you can quickly earn enough to buy an award flight.

Transfer Credit Card Points

If you don’t fly on Cathay Pacific frequently, the best way to earn enough miles for a redemption is going to be to transfer points from credit card rewards programs. Cathay Pacific Asia Miles is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Brex, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards. All of these programs allow transfers at a 1:1 ratio.

So, for instance, let’s say that you had 75,000 Capital One Miles. You could transfer those miles to the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program for free and receive 75,000 Cathay Pacific miles in your account in a matter of seconds.

Cathay World Elite Mastercard®

In addition to transferring points from credit card rewards programs, Asia Miles members can earn Cathay Pacific miles through credit card spending by signing up for the Cathay World Elite Mastercard®, which is issued by Synchrony Bank and is available to U.S. consumers.

The Cathay World Elite Mastercard® has an annual fee of $99. However, you can easily offset that fee with the benefits that this card offers.

You can earn miles on every purchase you make with the Cathay World Elite Mastercard®, including elevated spending bonuses in certain categories. Here are the spending bonuses offered by this card:

• 3X miles on eligible Cathay Pacific purchases
• 2X miles on dining in the U.S. and abroad
• 1X mile on everything else, wherever Mastercard is accepted worldwide

On top of that, the Cathay World Elite Mastercard® offers certain benefits that can make traveling with Cathay Pacific more comfortable and can save you money in some cases. Here are the other benefits offered by this card:

• Priority check-in at Cathay Pacific Premium Economy counters for yourself and any travel companions
• Priority boarding in the Premium Economy boarding line on any flight operated by Cathay Pacific
• Ability to redeem Asia Miles for access to Cathay Pacific Business Class lounges
• 10% redemption discount on hotel, car rental and experience awards with Asia Miles
• 10% savings on Asia Miles Gift Miles, Mileage Renewals and Mileage Transfer Fee transactions

If you fly with Cathay Pacific often, adding this card to your wallet might be a good idea. However, if you aren’t a frequent customer of Cathay Pacific, you’re probably better off signing up for a different airline’s credit card or even better, a card with transferable points.

Flying With Cathay Pacific and Partner Airlines

Another effective way to earn Cathay Pacific miles is to take paid flights with Cathay Pacific or one of its airline partners. In order to earn miles for flights, you’ll need to select Cathay Pacific Asia miles as your frequent flyer program of choice and enter your membership number, either when making your booking or when checking in for your flight.

When flying with Cathay Pacific, you’ll earn miles based on the route you’re flying and the fare class you booked. The easiest way to find out how many miles you could earn on a Cathay Pacific-operated flight is to use the Asia Miles calculator tool on the Cathay Pacific website. With this tool, you can enter your departure airport, arrival airport and cabin class and see the number of miles that you’ll earn for that flight.

You can also see how many miles you’d earn on partner-operated flights with this tool by clicking on the “Other airlines” tab. Then, select the airline that you’re flying with as well as your departure airport, arrival airport and cabin class to find out the number of miles you could earn.

Since Cathay Pacific is a member of Oneworld Alliance, you can earn Cathay Pacific miles when flying with any Oneworld airline. The current roster of Oneworld Alliance airlines is as follows:

In addition to the Oneworld airlines listed above, Cathay Pacific also has partnerships with several non-Oneworld airlines that allow you to earn Cathay Pacific miles on flights. Here are Cathay Pacific’s other airline partners:

Flying with Cathay Pacific or one of its partner airlines is a solid way to rack up miles and also work towards earning Asia Miles elite status.

How To Book Award Flights Through Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

Now that you know how to earn Cathay Pacific miles, let’s go over how to redeem those miles. There are many different ways to spend miles through the Asia Miles program. However, not all redemption methods offer the same value per mile. Simply put, when redeeming 10,000 miles one way, they might be worth a cash value of $80. But, when redeemed another way, those same 10,000 miles could be worth $200 or more.

In general, the best way to maximize the value of your miles is to redeem them for award flights with Cathay Pacific or one of its partner airlines. In order to do so, you’ll first need to go to the Cathay Pacific website and sign in to your account (which you can do using your phone number, membership number or email).

Once you’re signed in, click on the “Flights” button from the toolbar on the top of the homepage. This will bring you to the flight search tool where you can choose the “Redeem flights” option to search for award flights. From there, the process of booking an award flight is nearly identical to booking a cash flight.

Enter your origin, destination, type of flight (round-trip or one-way), cabin class, number of travelers and travel dates. Then, click the green “Redeem flights” button to conduct your search.

You’ll then be shown a list of results that match your search query and their respective prices in Cathay Pacific miles. This list will include any available award flights operated by either Cathay Pacific or one of its partner airlines. You can sort these results by highest recommended, flight duration, arrival time and departure time. You can also choose to filter the results for only direct flights.

Once you find a flight that suits your needs, click on the flight to add it to your itinerary. Repeat this for your return flight if applicable. Next, a pop-up window will appear at the bottom of the screen with the total number of required miles and the total taxes and fees for your flight. If this looks good, click the “Next” button.

From there, you’ll be asked to provide personal information about any travelers on your itinerary, including name, date of birth, preferred frequent flyer program and address. You’ll also be asked if you want to add travel extras, such as seat selection or travel protection. Finally, you’ll need to enter a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees for your flights.

Once you’ve added a payment method, you can confirm your booking. At that point, you should receive a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in to your flight.

As soon as you confirm your award flight booking, the required miles for the flight will be deducted from your account balance.

The Bottom Line

The Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program is a favorite among points and miles enthusiasts because it’s a transfer partner of most of the major credit card rewards programs, it’s a member of Oneworld Alliance, it offers favorable award pricing for its own awards as well as partner awards and because the Cathay Pacific website is fairly easy to navigate (even for English speakers).

So, if you’re interested in traveling with credit card points or airline miles, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program. And, if you ever find it difficult to book an award flight through the Asia Miles program, you can always refer to the step-by-step instructions in this article.