FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Cathay Pacific (CX) Award Redemption, Booking and Availability – 2017 and Later
Old Jun 5, 2018, 2:52 pm
  #2255  
eponymous_coward
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: SEA, but up and down the coast a lot
Programs: Oceanic Airlines Gold Elite
Posts: 20,341
Originally Posted by Kremmen
SEA residents will suffer and I'd suggest many of AS's SEA members do earn by flying AS.
Many of those SEA residents who actually get enough miles piled together to redeem on CX (50k-70k is a lot for someone who is an occasional flier and not dedicated to the pursuit of manufactured spend/churning/arbitrage plays, and that is just ONE one way redemption) are MVPG+ and aren't affected.

The vast majority of AS MP redemptions aren't for CX, or even for other partners- the lion's share stays inside of MP. At least it was the case in 2013 (the last time I have data provided by AS).



The most common overseas place for Americans to take vacations is Europe, BTW. SE Asia not so much.

I really don't believe this has changed a lot over the years- obvious DL/AM/KL/AF are gone but are replaced by JL/HU/DE/FI. Remember, AS's membership is mostly NA-based, and FT really is not representative of where most people fly or redeem. Bloggers or FT would have you believe everyone goes to DPS or MLE for vacation. If that was truly the case the availability would be nonexistent. I've redeemed some on CX, but I redeem on AS as well, and I know the "oh, neat, Krug and a lie flat for cheap" tricks as well as anyone.

I will grant the $125 fee for partner award changes hurts MVPs who need to/must redeem way in advance, and the occasional non-elite who somehow gets a large pile of AS miles in their account. But it is somewhat difficult to do this without flying AS very much or being a gamer/arbitrageur, since AMEX/Chase Citi aren't transfer partners, and the BofA bonus isn't big enough to get you CLOSE to a CX premium round trip without multiple cards or a ton of spend. Your options to get a big pile of AS miles at reasonably low cost in your account without much flying are:

- Diner's Club (I imagine there are six or so people out here who do this, but it is still a thing)
- churning/ms'ing BofA, which is pretty obviously trying to game the system
- SPG/Marriott (SPG sold points at reasonable prices for arbitrage regularly, don't know if Marriott will, but there are people out there doing SPG->Marriott Travel Packages->AS as an arbitrage play, and SPG->Alaska was always a potential arbitrage on flying CX cheap called out by bloggers over the year)
- Buy AS miles directly to fly CX (which is pretty much the definition of being an arbitrageur since you can spend $2000 ish for AS miles during a sale and then you have enough to fly CX J round trip in SE Asia. $3000-3500 and you have CX F anywhere they fly from North America).

Originally Posted by Kremmen
You'd think that the "FT arbitrageurs" you speak of would likely be in those highly populated cities not well served by AS, such as NYC and EWR and they will not be affected nearly as much as those in SEA!
Perhaps. I suspect a lot of them are in SYD/MEL/ADL/BNE/PER or in Asia based on posting in this thread.

Last edited by eponymous_coward; Jun 5, 2018 at 3:17 pm
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