Question for the frequent corporate travelers. I'm wondering if there are any purchase programs you use to purchase long haul J tickets on CX. I've heard of special banking relationships with deals such as free upgrade at Y ticket price. But I hear that these are mostly for regional short haul and is promoted to Asia-based companies.

My company is US-based and there is a myriad of credit card airline programs with the Starwood being the best because you can transfer points over to Asia Miles. But I need a backup plan because I foresee having 250k miles with no redemption availability. I've been reluctant to switch over business purchases from 1.5% cash back to SPG for this reason.... $30k spending a month = $450 cash back, better than unredeemable miles, lol.

Theres an AMEX card that offers 2-for-1 Y purchase program, but I'm not sure if thats the best... LAX-HKG is $8300 R/T on Y, at 2 tickets it is still more than $4k. You and I know that AMEX will "charge" you $8k and they will get some sort of discount from CX, so the deal sounds fishy in the first place.

For some reason, I see better benefits for asia-based business travelers, but maybe this is because banks there have a high marketing budget. I can expense Y and F fares if I wanted to, but being the owner of a small business its my own budget that i'm spending. Besides, instead of a $5k J fare I rather do $1k Y fare with $$ leftover for a ferrari payment .