Originally Posted by
buschoi
I would try asiamiles.com in your case as you can see a whole week of availability in one search. I found May 4 has a J seat available on CX883. See if you can grab it.
It also looks like CX has plenty of Y availability from SFO pretty much every day in late April and May, including weekends. Can you be more flexible and fly out of SFO?
EDIT to add: nevermind flying out of SFO.... since you are redeeming BA miles, you have to fly one partner all the way through.
IIRC, he wants to fly LAX-CAN, which happens to be the exact same route I flew last week. I ended up on CX883 connecting to 8a KA flight to CAN. While I'm in no position to complain since the ticket only set me back $50 and I got to try out CX's new biz product, I'm tempted to use JL when I try to repeat the same trip next month.
Rationale:
-JL has much better food than CX
-LAX-HKG is actually a really long flight, even in business class
-even though CX's seats are completely flat, I felt cramped; it's almost like they were designed with 5'8" passengers in mind
-by contrast, I personally find the JL Neo seats to be quite comfortable
-CX blows away JL (and most other carriers) on the IFE front, but I'm happy as long as I have the map and some decent music; I don't require a 17" screen
-both CX and JL have really big business class cabins, which means that the service isn't much better than that on your typical UA 2-class 777, but I still feel that JL does a better than CX job wrt to adapting to this problem; SQ has solved it completely, but I digress
-even though BA won't commit to it when you book, ime JL hands out hotel vouchers like candy for pax on forced overnights (stark contrast to its more efficiently run competitor, NH); I would take this gamble
All that having been said, one really great thing about CX awards for CAN visitors is, as long as you're willing to take the train to and from Guangzhou, you can tack on an additional segment to anywhere CX or KA flies in Asia.
OT: I really want to try CX F on a future trip (it looked so amazing when I walked on past those 9 seats), but that's a comparatively poor use of BA miles IMO.
All of that complaining aside, I knew this BA card was a sweet deal the second I laid eyes upon it, but the full extent of the sweetness didn't hit home until midway through that first 16-hour (yes, that's how long it took) flight on CX. If and when this offer returns, I plan on expanding my referral efforts even further afield. Basically, I want to get my hands on as many miles as possible because C for $50 each way (plus the hassle of the $2k spend) beats the hell out of paying $600 for Y. While some would argue that the latter would help be build/maintain status, I'd happily trade all of my status away if I could continue to fly in biz for almost nothing.