Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - how to calculate miles required for open jaw ticket

having failed in my attempt to secure an upgrade award for my preferred dates (luckily i checked before i booked the tickets), i tried to get a round trip award ticket instead. seats were available and i learnt how to calculate miles required for an open jaw award ticket - tutored by the friendly MPC customer services exec.

1. round trip award allows 2 stopovers, 2 transfers and 1 open jaw at origin, turnaround or enroute.

2. FRA-HEL(stop) (openjaw) ARN-OSL(stopover)-HEL(transfer)-FRA

3. i thought: okay, applying the normal round trip award rules, take distance between FRA and the furthest destination city - 25,000 miles required to redeem

4. however, i was told 35,000 miles required

5. why? apparently, if there's an open jaw in the trip, they'll add up the actual miles (much like the oneworld award ticket) for all sectors on each "side" of the open jaw

6. FRA-HEL: <1,200 miles; ARN-OSL-HEL-FRA: > 1,200 miles

7. they'll take the higher mileage of the 2 and viola, 35,000 miles required for redemption

it's not just for open-jaw, in fact, even for normal roundtrip tickets too...

e.g. HKG-SYD-MEL-HKG...the further is MEL (i think)...and it's <5000 miles HKG-MEL...HKG-SYD is <5000 miles too...but they would add HKG-SYD and SYD-MEL, and i think they said now the total is 5006 miles...and it's in the >5000 miles zone...although, say, for a normal paid HKG-MEL ticket, SYD is a valid connection point...

i think this logic applies no matter you stopover in SYD or not...they didn't even give some flexibility to diamond members, HKG-SYD-MEL is 5006 miles, and you need 100,000 miles instead of 60,000 miles for business class...no exception...

i did argue with them, coz looking at the terms and conditions, it seems to imply that for normal roundtrip awards, it counts only distance between origin and destination...while for one-way awards, they add up the sectors...but in reality, it seems they add up all sectors no matter what...which doesn't seem to be what the terms and conditions are saying (at least 1.5 yrs ago when i redeemed that award)...

tedhl,

i agree. the rules seem to imply that for round trip awards, you do not look at the actual miles flown, just the distance between origin and destination. this is especially since the one way award is quite explicit about so doing.

Dupe. Sorry !

[This message has been edited by Guy Betsy (edited 04-27-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by epigram:
..this is especially since the one way award is quite explicit about so doing.

</font>

epigram... I was trying to redeem an oneway award from SIN to JNB. Stopover in BKK and connecting in HKG. I was met with a firm "NO". That I could not stop over in BKK and transfer at HKG as well. If you see the Terms and Conditions, it only specifies that ONE stopover is allowed. It does not say that how many transfers are required but it does mention that all points are calculated into the final award requirement. Fine. But the stopover is BKK and one needs to connect via HKG enroute somewhere... Sorry they say.

If the return award allows 2 transfer and 2 connections, shouldn't the oneway award allows for 1 transfer as well? No... I can only stop in HKG...

So in fact, if someone wants to travel Oneway from Tokyo to Sydney with a stopover in Taipei, one cannot do so . Asiamiles only permits you to stopover in HKG! Which in my opinion is ridiculous since Asiamiles is not all only about CX... but BA as well.

If such terminalogy existed in the US, Asiamiles will be hauled off to court for misrepresentation. In fact, a couple of years ago, Asiamiles charged me twice for British tax on an award even though one was only connecting through. BA (which the award was booked on : HKG-x/LHR-BUD-x/LHR-HKG)even said that there was no tax, but Asiamiles was adamant, and gave me the choice to fly or not. I faxed to Customer Relations and highlighted the incident. Within half a day, Customer Relations replied that Asiamiles will refund the tax... all about US$100 of it because their ticketing department confirmed that there was no tax. No apology from Asiamiles either.

But how many people actually check these things? And how many people has Asiamiles have invariably 'cheated' with uneccesary taxes, service fees and worse... extra mileage that was not required!

[This message has been edited by Guy Betsy (edited 04-27-2002).]

Guy Betsy I see what you mean, the book does say that only one stopover is allowed though. If you go from SIN-BKK-JNB the stopover in BKK then unless you have a direct flight from BKK-JNB it would not fit in with the rule of one stopover.

You would have to go SIN-BKK-HKG-JNB, the HKG part is the additional transit which is the problem. Unfortunately CX doesn't fly direct BKK-JNB.

I guess the logic here is that you would take up another seat with no additional revenue which is why these rules are set.

This stopover transit rule has always confused me and my secretary actually taught drew it on a whiteboard for me to understand.
Fom a business perspective I do know why it is done this way.