How to Set Up a Redemption Group for Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

Asia Miles is the frequent flyer program of Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific, which is known for its excellent premium cabin products and for its status as a member of Oneworld Alliance. And, despite being headquartered halfway around the world, Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles program is actually very relevant for U.S.-based travelers.

U.S. consumers can earn Asia Miles by transferring points from nearly every major credit card rewards program, including American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards. And, since Cathay Pacific is a member of Oneworld Alliance, those miles can be redeemed for flights on any Oneworld airline, including American Airlines, British Airways and many more. Cathay Pacific is also one of the best frequent flyer programs for booking a round-the-world award with miles.

Another great feature of this program is the “redemption group” option. This option allows you to nominate up to five people to your redemption group and then redeem your miles for flights for those nominees.

So, if you frequently purchase flights for friends or family members, you’ll want to know how to use the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program’s redemption group option. In this article, we’ll explain how this option works, how to set up a redemption group and how to change your nominees.

What Is a Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Redemption Group?

With the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program, you can create a redemption group of up to five people. These people can be friends, family members or anyone else. The members of your redemption group don’t need to be members of the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program.

Once you’ve created a redemption group, you can use your Asia Miles to book award flights for any of those five people. Unfortunately, Cathay Pacific charges a service fee of $90 when booking an award flight for a nominee online and $160 when booking an award flight for a nominee through other channels.

Many other frequent flyer programs allow you to book award flights for other people. For example, the United MileagePlus program allows you to book award travel for anyone and doesn’t charge an additional fee for doing so. Other programs have more specific rules. For instance, the ANA Mileage Club program says that a “member can register up to 10 people (their spouse or same-sex partner and relatives within two degrees of family relationship) as award users.”

The fact that Cathay Pacific charges a fee to book award travel for others is disappointing. However, using your redemption group to book flights for other people is still a better deal than transferring Cathay Pacific Asia Miles to other members. When transferring Asia Miles between member accounts, you’ll be charged $170 for the first 10,000-mile block that you transfer as well as $140 for every additional block of 5,000 miles that you transfer. So, for example, if you were to transfer 20,000 miles to another member, it would cost you a whopping $450. Obviously, this is a terrible deal and should definitely be avoided.

So, if you want to use your Asia Miles to book a flight for someone else, it’s a much better idea to add that person to your redemption group than to transfer miles to them.

How to Set Up a Redemption Group

In order to set up a redemption group, you’ll first need to be a member of the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program. This program is free to join and enrolling only takes a few minutes.

Once you have an Asia Miles account, you can go to the Cathay Pacific website homepage and select the “Change redemption group” option from the “Membership” drop-down menu along the navigation menu near the top of the page.

From there, you’ll be asked to provide information for all of the nominees that you want to add to your redemption group. This information includes the following:

• Travel document type and number (i.e. passport)
• Name
• Date of birth
• Country of residence
• Frequent flyer number (optional)
• Emergency contact (optional)
• Phone number
• Email address

Once someone has been added to your redemption group, you’ll have the option to select that person as the primary traveler when booking award flights through the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program. However, as mentioned above, you’ll be charged a fee whenever booking an award flight for someone in your redemption group.

How to Change Your Redemption Group

Once you’ve created your initial redemption group, you can change the members of your redemption group as many times as you like. However, by doing so, you may incur an additional fee.

You have the option to change each of your nominees once per membership year for free, which means you can replace up to five nominees per membership year for free.

If you add more than five new nominees to your redemption group during a membership year, you’ll be required to pay a fee of $50 if you make the change online and $75 if you make the change through other channels (such as calling Cathay Pacific customer service).

So, to illustrate, let’s say that you sign up for the Asia Miles program on December 18, 2024. At that point, you can appoint your initial five redemption group nominees. If you want to change any of these nominees between December 18, 2024, and December 18, 2025, you’ll have to pay a fee. However, once December 18, 2025, arrives and your membership year resets, you can change all five of your nominees for free if you like. However, after you’ve changed those five nominees during that membership year, you’ll have to pay a fee if you want to change them again.

The only exception here is if you have Diamond elite status in the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program. Diamond status members can change six nominees per membership year. After that, normal fees apply.

How to Book a Flight For a Redemption Group Nominee

Once you’ve added people to your redemption group and entered all of their information correctly, it should be very easy to book an award flight ticket in their name.

First, you’ll need to visit the Cathay Pacific website and sign in to your account. Then, you’ll need to click the “Earn and spend Asia Miles” option from the “Membership” drop-down menu along the navigation menu near the top of the page. From there, you’ll need to scroll down the page until you see a section titled “Great ways to spend Asia Miles” and click the “Learn more” button under the “Flights” subsection.

Once you click that button, you’ll be redirected to a new page where you can search for award flights. Like searching for any other flight, you simply enter your origin and destination, type of flight, cabin class, travel dates and number of passengers. Then, click the “Search flights” button and see all of the available award flights that match your itinerary (both on Cathay Pacific and partner airlines) and their respective prices in Asia Miles.

When it comes time to enter your passenger information, you should have the option to select any one of your nominees from your redemption group as well as yourself if you’ve previously saved your passenger information. If you’re booking an award flight for multiple people, you should be able to select multiple nominees from your redemption group.

However, some people have reported experiencing issues with selecting redemption group members online. If this is the case, you may have to call Cathay Pacific customer service in order to book an award flight for a member of your redemption group. If you do so, make sure to mention that the website was malfunctioning so you don’t get charged a higher booking fee.

The Bottom Line

Unlike certain frequent flyer programs that allow you to redeem airline miles for flights for friends and family for free (such as the United MileagePlus program), the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles program only allows you to purchase award flights for friends and family members that are in your redemption group and charges a fee to do so.

Asia Miles members can have five people in their redemption group at a time. To redeem miles for an award flight for those in your redemption group, there is a fee of $90 for booking online and $160 for booking through other channels. You can only nominate up to five people to your redemption group per membership year. If you want to make any more than five changes to your redemption group per year, you’ll have to pay additional fees (unless you have Diamond elite status, in which case you can make six changes per year before paying a fee).

All in all, using Cathay Pacific miles to pay for award flights for other people will always involve paying some fees, which is disappointing. Nonetheless, if you have a balance of miles in this frequent flyer program that you want to use to book travel for a friend or family member, then you will want to understand how to use the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles redemption group option.