Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Worth switching from BA Executive Club to Marco Polo?

I am about to lose my Silver status with BA, largely because I moved from London to Singapore and now mostly fly Singapore airlines (where I have PPS status). That said I do like the flexibility of using Cathay when I fly to Hong Kong (and sometimes the other One World airlines within Asia) and like the fact that I have been getting lounge access with my Silver card.

I'm trying to work out whether it makes sense to sign up to Cathay and move my future miles over to them. I am not too bothered about losing the ability to add to my existing (extremely high) balance of BA miles, triggered by flying like a demon in my past job and a BA Amex card. The real benefit for me is lounge access. My question is how many flights in economy around Asia (mostly (HK/Sing)) would it take me to get silver status with Cathay?

Obviously if there is an easier way to get lounge access in HK I would be interested in that too.

Any advice appreciated.

Basically you will need 10 RT in Y needed, if you go further than HK and transit at HKG then it's much easier to gain status with the "Sector" system (e.g. you only need 5 RT in Y for SIN - PVG / PEK / TPE ..)

Do try ask CX to comp your SQ PPS status for a quick start at MPC. Welcome to CX!

Well, you need 30,000 miles to get MP Silver, and SIN to HKG is around 3000 miles round trip. So 10 trips a year on economy.
Would it be worth it? IMO yes, for lounge acess and possible op-ups.

Well, you need 30,000 miles to get MP Silver, and SIN to HKG is around 3000 miles round trip. So 10 trips a year on economy.
Would it be worth it? IMO yes, for lounge acess and possible op-ups.

I think with regional flying, the OP would be better off flying the 20 sector requirement for silver rather than the 30000 miles. But I guess in this case, with HKG-SIN, it makes no difference really. But if the OP can fly a little extra distance to TPE or wherever, as ChrisLi mentioned, it'd help knock off another sector in reaching the sector requirement.

That being said, if OP travels J class and F class, it's 1.25 and 1.5 sectors per 1 sector respectively.

I have found making status is real easy for me on CX and I always get mega treatment. Then when I renew my diamond I credit the miles to gettng BA gold. But the the problem with BA is there are so many gold cards who get it from not flying and although the staff are great they have to kissarse with them and they know it. I was told they premium check in desks at Heathrow are called the T**t desks and now I know why I get good treatment by being nice and laid back

CX currently have a business class (I) promotion ex-TPE until the end of 2009 which I have been using to rack up sectors while enjoying a lot of travel around SE asia.

From scratch you would need 4 such trips to make silver (4 sectors per trip x 1.25 bonus) then another 8 trips to make gold and 16 to make diamond. Total 28 trips if you wanted to make DM from zero.