Originally Posted by eponymous_coward

Assuming you are MVPG or that Alaska still has COVID-related ticket cancellation fee waivers at the time you book and cancel. Right now the waiver only covers pre-May 31 tickets and that date hasn't moved in a while.



The problem's going to be on awards getting award availability to line up on multiple segments during rebooking, or getting to your original destination; what is VERY likely to happen is travel that used to be XXX(USA)-HKG-YYY(somewhere CX serves) may turn into XXX-QQQ(USA- CX dropped XXX-HKG, QQQ is their new NA gateway)-HKG-ZZZ (alternate destination CX still serves because they dropped HKG-YYY). Imagine that there's now also 12-16 hour stopovers that turned a fairly straightforward (if long) trip halfway around the world into a multi-day slog through airports. Yes, CX's HKG's lounges are fine. It's still going to turn travel into more of a grind even if you're in F/J if you're killing multiple days to get to India, South Africa, SE Asia, etc.

This may not be a problem for you in Asia if you're booking CX and do not care about getting to a CX North American gateway, but AS's primary customer base is North American.