Today, I have found that the CX website (using the 'Elevated' redemption search tool) vs. calling in to a live agent gives different award search results. But, I was quite pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

I was looking for two First Class award tickets to London. Searching on the website yielded F1 for 17 Feb and F2 for 18 Feb. However, searching for TPE-HKG-LHR for the same dates gave me Econ options only for 17 Feb, and Econ and Business options for 18 Feb.

I decided to call in. The live agent (a very competent and pleasant gentleman) could see F2 for both 17 Feb and 18 Feb for CX 251 HKG-LHR. I requested him to grab the two seats on 17 Feb immediately. Then, I asked the agent to tack on the TPE-HKG sector (in Business only, of course), and the only available flight he could see was CX 495, which made for a 10+ hour layover in HKG. He said that this was quite a long connection, and offered to see if he could request another flight to be opened up for me. I told him how long of a layover I was hoping for, and he found a perfect flight for two J award seats.

What I was most surprised about, however, was the miles required to issue the tickets. The CX website quotes 100,000 miles for HKG-LHR in F. However, my tickets came out to 97,200 miles (each) only for TPE-HKG in J AND HKG-LHR in F. How could this be? I even asked the agent to double-check this, and he confirmed the miles requirement was correct. My booking has just been ticketed this afternoon.