Aeroplan has announced that Aeroplan miles can now be redeemed for Cathay Pacific, Cathay Dragon and GOL awards online. Eligible routes for Cathay Pacific/Cathay Dragon are flights between Hong Kong and:
- Chiang Mai, Thailand
- Phuket, Thailand
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Cebu, Philippines
- Manila, Philippines
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Hanoi, Vietnam
I saw this reported yesterday and was testing out some dates in June to no avail. Both AA and Qantas show nonstop CX avail JFK-HKG in J on June 23, for example, but Aeroplan doesn’t show it. I tried for other dates around that time too and didn’t find any.
What is the award chart?
Cathay – 20,000 in economy, 40,000 in business. These flights are all under 4 hours. You can do it for 17,500 economy and 22,500 business with American Advantage miles or 11,000 economy, 22,000 business with BA Avios.
So, not a particularly exciting redemption.
Availability used to be abundant on these flights but have tightened significantly. This will only make it worse I think. From that point of view it’s not good news. But if these are the only miles you have it’s good news I suppose.
Can you book this as a connection with a Star Alliance Flight?
Yup, you can combine Start Alliance partners and non-alliance partners on the same itinerary.
Cathay seems to have much worse availability on these regional flights. Got a lot worse in past few years, where it’s basically useless to fly to Asia because I could only barely find the long-haul availability to HKG. We’ll see how it’s looking after Covid but I don’t have my hopes up.