Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - BOS-TPE: Lowest CXleverage fares, which routing for NBC?

I'm planning travel from BOS to TPE, outbound Feb 22, return Feb 28. (Could move each flight a couple days in each direction.) I'm paying out-of-pocket so I want to reduce cost, and after experiencing some CX New Business last year, I definitely want as high as possible a probability of getting that. I do have CXleverage access.

What I've found so far:
BOS-JFK-YVR-HKG-TPE and return prices at $3506.
JFK-YVR-HKG-TPE and return prices at $3086.
SFO-YVR-HKG-TPE prices at $2635
LAX-YVR-HKG-TPE prices at $2634
SEA-YVR-HKG-TPE prices at $3881 (I had thought this might be a good deal, guess not)
YVR-HKG-TPE prices at $3474 (no CXleverage discount, because I'm a US CXleverage member?)
YYZ-HKG-TPE prices at $4020 (same)
PVD-YYZ-YVR-HKG-TPE prices at $2674 **one-way** (hard to get make a return connection to PVD given time zone issues; CXleverage seems unable to deal with an overnight connection somewhere along the way, even using Multicity)

Would separately buy discount coach tickets to get myself to the non-BOS gateways. For any of JFK, LAX, or SFO, this would be cheaper than buying a single ticket from BOS.

I'd take either the SFO or LAX flights, but they seem to be 747s, unlikely to have NBC. One of the LAX flights may be EQV (CXleverage wasn't clear, to me at least), but even that seems risky. Last year I was fortunate to find a good MHT-YYZ-HKG-BKK fare outbound, and a return on a 340 through SFO, but with 747s on all the US gateways and with the MHT origin not pricing out on CXleverage ("no flights found"), I'm at a bit of a loss.

Any recommendations?

A follow up to this --

Notwithstanding what CXleverage says, my own http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/travel/galileo/ indicates 340-600s on the late flight from LA to HKG each night, and on the late flight from HKG to LA too. Maybe that's the answer for me -- route through LA. Any sense of how reliable the 346 equipment is here? I've seen more than one report on this forum of disappointment (expected 346, didn't get it) but by and large I'd expect & hope for consistency. After all, it's a pretty big deal for CX to summon a 747 crew rather than a 340-family crew -- different pilots altogether -- so I'd expect them to follow their stated plan.

Anyone know a source for fares even cheaper than CXleverage? I'd be open to the old trick (not against the rules) of a one-way from the US to destination plus a one-way return -- taking advantage of price discrimination and/or currency fluctuation -- but it doesn't look like this would work out to my advantage. (The one-way CXleverage fares are more than half the round-trip fares.)

I would really really advise you not to count on NBC on any of the flights. EQ change is very common, more so in winter, and with the 346 being put into action.

In 2002 I got old J on a flight where new J was scheduled, and new J on a flight that showed an old 747 config.

Enjoy Cathay, but don't count on NBC. There's nothing to be disappointed about if you end up in the old J. It's still great service on a comfy chair.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mhtaipei:
I would really really advise you not to count on NBC on any of the flights. EQ change is very common, more so in winter, and with the 346 being put into action.
</font>

Always good advice.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Enjoy Cathay, but don't count on NBC. There's nothing to be disappointed about if you end up in the old J. It's still great service on a comfy chair.
</font>

I agree that it's great service. Not so sure about the chair, though -- I found it hard to sleep in, not as bad as an AA 757 (in F) but not much better than an AA 767 (in J) and worse than an AA 777 (again, in J). Very limited entertainment, no in-seat power. Definitely a far worse value than AA Business when obtained via mileage or VIPOW upgrade from coach.

So if I can't find a route with a solid likelihood of NBC, I'm likely to take AA through NRT, upgrading as far as NRT. That's the dilemma.

Is there any way to get a rigorous sense of the frequency with which LAX-HKG has been operated with 346 equipment rather than 747? For example, any record of equipment usage for the past week? The link above can give day-by-day *predicted* equipment allocation, but I don't think it would ever show a trend (should such a trend exist) of substituting the 346 with some other equipment.

Bedelman,

Don't know if your dates are set in stone or not, but those dates don't seem to have availability at the lowest CXLeverage fares. I purchased a ticket LAX-HKG-TPE roundtrip for travel in March. Today, those city pairs are pricing at $2266 in J. I bought tickets for the flights "supposedly" using the A346 both ways. We'll see what's parked at the gate when I get there!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by djcrooks:
Don't know if your dates are set in stone or not, but those dates don't seem to have availability at the lowest CXLeverage fares. I purchased a ticket LAX-HKG-TPE roundtrip for travel in March. Today, those city pairs are pricing at $2266 in J. I bought tickets for the flights "supposedly" using the A346 both ways. We'll see what's parked at the gate when I get there!</font>

Interesting. Some discounted premium fares seem to vary by day of week of travel. What are your outbound (west) and return (east) travel days?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by bedelman:
Interesting. Some discounted premium fares seem to vary by day of week of travel. What are your outbound (west) and return (east) travel days?</font>

I am traveling outbound on March 2 and returning March 8. I just checked those specific dates again and got $2634, however randomly checking 3/20 out and 3/25 back gives $2266. I actually paid $2286. Don't know where the extra $20 came into play.

See further discussion on this in http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum85/HTML/001374.html .

As described in that thread, I'm puzzled to find fares that self-identify as non-leverage pricing out lower than the so-called "Special Leverage Fares." Perhaps inadvisably, I'm still hoping to get the lower ~$2286 fare -- watching the bottom line since this is out-of-pocket. Hard to do with the leverage site unreliable and a background fear that the Chinese new year might yet make well-priced seats hard to find (notwithstanding lots of J9 D9's in the Galileo display).

I figured out how to get the ~$2200 fare -- transpacific travel on Monday-Thursday, not Friday-Sunday, in both directions. This may be helpful to someone else, I would think, though the CXlev site is surprisingly good at making this recommendation throughout.

Still trying to figure out a good routing for NBC plus decent connections. Outbound, the late LAX 346 looks fine. Returning, it's tough -- no AA LAX-BOS (except the terrible 757 red-eye) to connect with either HKG-LAX flight; a fine SFO connection, but a 74B flying to SFO, near-guaranteed to have old business class. Hmm.

I've posted this elsewhere but it seems that the 747-400 with NBC configuration ex-JFK is available daily except Mondays and Thursdays.

LAX/SFO seem a bit temperamental.

I saw this elsewhere and could hardly believe my eyes. Many thanks for explaining this so clearly -- it certainly isn't obvious from Galileo, Cathay's site, etc. (since 74J is used for both OBC and NBC configs of the big-J plane). I had gotten a bit attached to the idea of spending a day in LAX en route to HKG, and it looks like fares come out a bit cheaper that way (even after adding a discount BOS-LAX-BOS on AA for ~$400), but perhaps that just doesn't make sense. Certainly the return works much better connecting in JFK than anywhere else with NBC. (SFO has a fine connection, but SFO clearly has OBC on its 74B.)

Interestingly, I don't see a difference in fares between days of week when using the JFK gateway to HKG. For LAX and SFO, there's a ~$200 price increase for each transpacific segment that's on a Friday through Sunday (or, depending on how you think about it, a corresponding drop for accepting Monday through Thursday travel). For JFK, I get the same $3086.10 no matter what days of the week I request. Also of note: ex-JFK, the "Exclusive Leverage Fare"-designated fares are competitive (about the level expected), whereas from LAX/SFO the Leverage-designated fares are *more* than the non-designated fares. (See the "What happened to CX Leverage fares?" thread.)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by bedelman:
Still trying to figure out a good routing for NBC plus decent connections...Returning, it's tough -- no AA LAX-BOS (except the terrible 757 red-eye)...</font>

Actually, I find the 757 red-eye not so bad. After the Cathay flight, I'm not looking for a quiet, pain-free connection to BOS. On the 9.40pm from LAX, there's no meal and most people try to sleep through the flight. Also, it tends to have fewer passengers than the daytime flights, and fewer ATC delays can make it a faster flight. (None of which is to say that 5-6 hrs on a 757 is a vacation.)