Is Alaska air have the best redemption to Thailand?

I plan to redeem Alaska mile for 2 tickets on coach to Thailand. I do not have the Alaska mile but I plan to transfer my SPG points to Alaska and then redeem it on Cathy Pacific. I check around and seem like Alaska only require 60K miles to Asia and they also allow a stop over.

Is this is the best option? Or should I redeem with other airline.

I currently have 300K SPG point
350K AA mile
100K on United and my husband have 100K on United.
100K on Amex points.
150K on BA

Thank you for all your help.

I'm not sure how award availability on Cathay Pacific is, but United and other Star alliance carriers seem to have good availability most of the year, and it only 65k miles round trip, with a stopover. There are more options for Star alliance to/within Asia (TG, NH, SQ, OZ, CA, UA, possibly AC), including Thai domestic flights if you're going anywhere other than Bangkok.

It's just about impossible to answer the question 'best' comprehensively. One can transfer SPG points to 30+ carriers. Beyond that, one can use those miles on programs which aren't directly SPG transfer partners (as with the idea of transferring SPG to Delta, and using Delta miles on Virgin Australia). The number of possible combinations just explodes.

That said, SPG to Alaska for travel on CX can be a good idea. AS allows a stopover - American Airlines is much more restrictive on international stopovers by comparison. There's no fuel surcharge on CX, unlike travel on BA (with BA, AA and AS miles, anyway). The AS partner desk has a good reputation for working hard to find available partner carrier routings.

Do make sure that award travel is available on Alaska (to get you to the CX gateway city) and CX in both directions before transferring SPG points to AS. You can't undo an SPG transfer to AS. You can't mix partner carriers (except AF/KL) when redeeming AS miles, as by flying CX to BKK and flying Delta back. Delta has more permissive stopover and carrier mixing rules but low-band award inventory on Delta-operated flights can be tough to find.

We live in Los Angeles which is CX gateway city. I took a look on CX website and seem their award availability is pretty good. I am very fixible on the travel date. I can go pretty much anytime.

Is AS require the least mile for travel to BKK?
Can I have AS put tickets on hold while I transfer point from SPG?

I dont believe there are any award holds on AS.

You cannot use the CX site to view accurate partner availability. It will show you whats available to those using CX miles. You might want to call AS to see whats available. If you can afford 70K RT you can get premium economy on CX using AS miles. 70K using AA miles only gets you regular economy.

Just FYI, I had this exact idea earlier this year. So, I started calling exactly when availability opened for Nov. 2013. I needed two tickets from LAX to BKK anytime in November. There were not 2 seats in coach anytime in November. I ended up splurging and booking Business class. So, just a heads up that coach availability, based on my experience (and the comments from multiple reps from the partner desk), is sometimes very hard to find on CX.

I did SFO to BKK (with a stopover in Hong Kong) on CX recently using AS miles, and it worked well. CX has something like 7 flights a day from HKG-BKK, and I found it was the North America to HKG leg that had more limited availability.

One word of warning: you cannot search for or book a CX award ticket online with AS. The partner award desk folks are very helpful, but it's still annoying and somewhat tedious to have to search for availability over the phone. I did find, however, that the award availability shown on CX's own website roughly correlated to the availability that AS had.

Finally, I would seriously consider booking in business class. It's only 40,000 more miles (i.e., 100,000 total), and well worth it in my opinion. CX's new business class on the 777-300ER (which they use for LAX) is great!

BA or QF's site will show true partner availability. Use those instead of CX's.

I was allowed to put international partner award tickets booked using AS miles on hold on two separate occasions while waiting for points to transfer from SPG. This should not be a problem unless the policy has changed in the last couple of years.

Don't forget that you can also use KE to get to BKK.

And yes, Y tickets on CX can be hard to find as they sell out a lot. C and are easier, especially if you check 2 weeks or so before departure.

http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...hart-asia.aspx

That's a LOT of blackout dates (especially since that means North America->BKK means you are hosed by both sets of blackout dates). By my accounting, almost half the year is blacked out for award travel.

I'd go CX J. It's a long d*mn flight & you've got plenty of miles. Keep reading Flyertalk and they'll keep rolling in too. Plus you get the great CX lounges at HKG. For 100K (still 100K right ?) or 80K SPG, that's a good deal. You're getting around $.07 for your SPG points.

Thank you for all your help. Is the premium economy award seat easier to find than economy?

When I booked in December, the AS partner desk hadn't yet got access from CX to book premium economy seats with AS miles. The agents said that they were hoping to have access soon.