Cathay Pacific First
Class award availability using AAdvantage and other oneworld partner miles may be dying.
Not exact matches
• Korean Air miles can be
used on Delta and offer more
availability for Upper
Class award tickets to Asia than most other programs.
So Miles & More will charge you fewer miles for business and first
class awards than if you
used United miles AND you get more
availability.
The very condensed version is that Brussels Airlines has opened a ton of business
class award availability through next year and you can book those
using 36,620 Etihad miles.
They don't let you book First
Class awards with partners at all, they rarely have low - level
award availability (and I think this might get worse after the recent devaluation), you can only redeem round trip flights (one - ways are coming in 2015 though), and in general their miles are much harder to
use than those of other programs.
In order to upgrade
using Avios there simply has to be Business
Class award availability on the flight in question....
I hardly found any Domestic business
class awards that are reasonably priced, Delta
uses dynamic pricing based on the demand,
availability for sky miles redemption.
American Airlines AAdvantage miles are very hard to
use economically thanks to the dearth of premium cabin SAAver
awards, United Miles are ok but 100,000 won't get you a roundtrip Business
Class award to any major long - haul destination (if you're heading east or west) while 100,000 Alaska Miles will get you some nice roundtrip redemptions on Cathay Pacific and even American (subject to
award availability).
United miles are even easier to
use when you hold the MileagePlus card, as you will have access to more economy
class award availability.
You'll want to book back - up flights, either
using United but booking on United or other Star Alliance partners that do offer advance
availability (or even Lufthansa Business
class awards for the flights you hope to get first
class on) OR
use American AAdvantage or other miles to book backup flights.
This
used to be an absolute «secret weapon» when it comes to
award availability, given that there were often at least first and business
class award seats available.
In the meantime, it makes it a no - brainer to redeem for Cathay Pacific First
Class instead of business class if using US Airways Dividend miles, although the challenge with that is that it's become harder to find Cathay Pacific award availability for two people traveling toge
Class instead of business
class if using US Airways Dividend miles, although the challenge with that is that it's become harder to find Cathay Pacific award availability for two people traveling toge
class if
using US Airways Dividend miles, although the challenge with that is that it's become harder to find Cathay Pacific
award availability for two people traveling together.
Getting
Award Flights to Paris
Using Miles: See our post Airlines and Routes with First and Business
Class Availability for Europe
first
class award availability when
using (and booking through) aadvantage is not the same as
award availability using cathay.
Getting
Award Flights to Switzerland
Using Miles: See our post Airlines and Routes with First and Business
Class Availability for Europe
For example, even though I
used American Airlines miles to book Cathay Pacific first
class flights, I didn't search for
award availability on the AA website.