I have quite a few American Express Membership Rewards points that I can transfer to CX or SQ on 1:1 basis.

I am looking at SYD-TYO award options and at Asia Miles I saw the following:

J SYD-HKG-HND one way for 45000 points + tax. I couldn't go to the next page on website as I do not have sufficient miles available.

Reading the T&Cs for Asia Miles I noticed the following:

Award zones are based on the one-way distance between the origin airport and destination airport. If connecting sectors are involved, the sector distances should be added together to determine the total one-way distance and the applicable award zone. Unless indicated otherwise, the awards in the table apply to round-trip flights.

Now SYD-HKG-HND has distance of 6385 miles (thanks gcmap), whereas SYD-HND direct is 4837 miles. Now the 45K one-way Business award applies distance up to 5000 miles.

My only guess is that the search engine only calculates miles, based on the direct miles, for the initial search to show the possible flight options. But once you click the particular flight option, and goes to the next page, then it would show actual requirement of miles (should be 70K based on distance of 6385 miles flown). However I cannot verify this unless I have enough miles in the account, and I don't want to transfer the points to my Asia Miles account just to test this theory.

So can someone who has enough miles, can do a search and confirm my theory? Thank you.