Happy

I hear you about specific events to attend. In 2016 when AA started allowing EU to Australia via DOH if it was QR to QR, we wanted to return to Sydney to see the Vivid Sydney again (we saw its first year by sheer coincidence). That led us to search for seats from EU to Australia - I was extremely pleased to find ZAG-DOH-SYD on first try while we were to visit Croatia to begin with. I was originally thinking we had to fly to CDG or LHR for that - but QR has daily flights between ZAG and DOH and award seats were the best among all EU gateways.

Yet, that trip was booked just 7 months out.
In our lives we have never planned anything one year away, let alone two years. LOL.

Well, we are very lucky that we never have to plan around a holiday or school holidays, etc. In fact we avoid those periods if at all possible. Nor we need to surprise spousal unit or bring the family. Everyday / Every week can be Vacay days. :-)

Years ago there was a TV ad for a financial institution. I forgot which one. In the Ad, a guy was about to leave home with a small travel bag in hand - as he walked out of the door he threw a dart behind him and then checked where the dart landed... Then he murmured, "may be I need to pack a sweater." ... Well, while we would not throw a dart behind us, but it is not unusual we spread out a map and see where we would like to go, with the available award seats. Did that very often up till recent years. Recent years the trips were more governed by Program Devaluation of all sorts - the airlines and the hotels. I really missed the fun in the past that we can search randomly on where the award seats are and then structure a trip around that.

Bottom line. our travel pattern is more of the spontaneous type - it often depends on what award seats are available then we try to map out where we would like to go once we get to that continent. Back when AA still offered a distance based award that let you have 14 segments 14 stopovers - we built a 11 cities "Circular Pacific" type trip within 5 days, all started from aimlessly looking at QF site on what might be available after we just canceled a distance based trip due to our BA flight was canceled and the rebooked flight only left us 1.5 hr transit at YYZ. AA would not let us take an earlier AA flight to connect to that without paying an additional 40K miles each because the award rules had changed as the first major AA devaluation. (it was during the aftermath years of financial crisis and airlines were canceling flights left and right.) One day I saw a pair of J seats LAX-AKL showed up on QF site and it was on the 747 with 3 class configuration but F was no longer offered. Long story short, after calling AA to put that pair on hold, we looked at the map and added segments every day - by Day 4 we were ready to ticket a 45 days trip to basically make a circle of Pacific Rim - LAX-AKL-SYD-SIN-KUL-HKG-TPE-ICN/GMP-KIX-CTS-HND-SFO-LAS. We threw away the SFO-LAS at the end (It was July and way too hot to go - it was there to get the total distance closer to 25K traveled, so not to "waste" the allowance ...)

I doubt many here would do such crazy trip with decision made in just 5 days. lol.

Well, these days the way things have been, no longer allows this kind of spontaneous trips so we have to adapt to the new normal but we still have some advantages - the flexibility, not only on the time frame, but also where to start the trip and how to go around the world. Hint: anything related to US is much harder than anything not touch US soil. This gets us changed to do RTW trips the past several years. For that we are very appreciative on the one-way system most airline programs have adopted. It makes things much easier to build when one can use multiple programs and multiple one-ways, plus local LCCs/Ferries/Trains/long distance buses to do a trip. Far more interesting than a CX LAX-HKG-DPS-BKK-HKG-LAX trip.

Like everybody else, we do try to maximize the value of our miles and points, but our concept of maximization is to use the sweet spots of each program - a good example is the eliminated Asia-Australia/New Zealand sweet spot on the UA chart - 40K in TG F with availability every day on 2 daily flights between BKK and SYD - definitely is much better than CX (and very hard to find availability).

The sweet spots on the AS charts are the CX and JL flights. Unfortunately the CX availability is quite poor since last year and is getting much worse this year. Even the long-afraid devaluation has not come yet, just the nonexistent availability (on all routes, not just the ever-popular ones on this thread) would mean a devaluation to me, for all practical purposes.

25milesfromhome

Within the past few weeks, I booked October outbound and November return CX F for my wife and KE J outbound CX F return for me for the same time frame. (I wasn't able to leave until a few days after her.) So availability doesn't seem that bad to me.

Normally, I would have booked this at 330 days. I understand that's not possible for everyone. But our trips are mostly liveaboard diving trips. Increasingly, the better boats at the more unique locations are filling up 18 months in advance. The choice of location is determined by seasonal conditions. So fixing dates early is required. And actually I find that this helps in dealing with the demands of work. Being able to say I've been booked for some dates for 18 months usually ends any discussion of whether I can somehow make myself available.

rufflesinc

I flew JL F once (well twice, as it was RT), and it was underwhelming, perhaps the most overrated F product I've had the fortune to experience. The western food selection on the plane is disappointing compared to CX, which could be expected for cultural reasons. As for CX, my destination is China so I don't have a need to eat chinese dishes on the plane and their western salads and steaks are lightyears better than JL.

If you are connecting beyond NRT , the F lounge there is basically a J lounge: No private rooms, cramped showers, no a la carte dining. Heck, towards the middle of our visit, they had signs up saying one area was at capacity, it felt like a DL skyclub with sushi. The only possible positive would be the massages didn't have 2-3 hour waits like Pier F, but that is going away in favor of massage chairs.

The only time I would ever fly JL F is if I were terminating in Japan, and even then I'd seriously considering flying CX to HKG and backtracking if schedule allowed.

jamienbaker

Valuable observations. I would simply ask that you quantify solo vs. family travel. Booking a family in F on JL (on awards) is materially easier than CX. Which also influences my views on JL. As do the materially better washrooms on JL. And I can't imagine why I'd ever take a Western meal on an Asian airline, so I believe most would agree JL Japanese dining is superior to CX Chinese dining...but again, splitting hairs.

As an aside, I'm flying KE JFKICNDPS in Aug but holding CX JFKHKGDPS as a backup in case there's any irregularity with KE. I would certainly expect to prefer the CX experience, save for having bars to explore on the KE A388, but the CX schedule is inferior and my goal is to get to DPS as quickly as possible.

Jamie

rufflesinc

On the airplane, the only thing I can recall about JL was the footpads. Everything else was about the same as CX (both 773ER obviously)

I mean if I'm flying to asia and eating asian food for two weeks , I don't want to have asian food thats worse than that in the air. I'd rather have my last steak before the vacation then the first steak when I come back. I find CX western cuisine to be very good (better than LH's ...) .

As for Japanese food, unfortunately I don't eat rice and I don't eat "exotic" seafood (just shrimp, lobster, scallop) so I mainly ate the JL western cuisine. The main food reason we went to Japan was the wagyu
Do you expect it to be hard to get anything earlier than the next days flight if the KE flight goes mech? Are you going carry-on only to avoid having to retrieve baggage?

jamienbaker

1) Bidet toilets. Mic drop. JL wins hands down. Granted, I have these at home, but that makes flying/traveling without them all the less pleasant.
2) I get the "last steak" concept. On the other hand, I treat the JL Japanese food as foreplay for what awaits upon arrival. I definitely agree the real thing will be better. But I definitely see your point.
3) I'm booked on KE departing JFK at 2p. If that folds, or looks like it will misconnect in ICN, I'm booked at 1a the following morn (so, 11 hrs later) on CX. KE gets me to DPS slightly after midnight, whereas CX arrives mid-afternoon the next day...so preference is KE. Also, a 5 hour HKG layover followed by 5 hours in CX regional J is a bit much for me to handle. Although CX would give me access to Flagship Dining at T8, which I love...

rufflesinc

Oh yeah I have bidet at home too, I guess I didn't notice on JL because I didn't have to use them on the plane ............... TMI?

travelbugging

Ever since the Asia Miles changes, Cathay award availability is not showing up on BA. I am curious to hear if anyone is able to successfully redeem Cathay award flights (from June 21 onward) and how they went about searching for availability. I hope this is only a temporary glitch/system change transition as I have a lot of AS miles I want to redeem! Thanks in advice.

TalkingPoint

I can see award availability on cx is now showing on searches for some airlines. But calling alaska they are still not able to see any award seats at all.

theOtherHolmes

steveholt

Cathay space isn't showing up on BA, either. So it seems like it's down in most places for now.

skimthetrees

Except CX Asia Miles which has plenty of availability.

beckoa

This doesn't sound good. Hope it's resolved soon.

steveholt

Right. So it seems like either:

1) CX is working out the kinks and restoring space to their own members before revealing it to partners
or
2) CX is now severely limiting partner availability.

Happy

I would suggest people to follow this thread in CX forum.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...2018-a-18.html

Asia Miles definitely is not seeing a lot of availability per the posts in the above thread. What you see is the Choice and Tailored, not Standard. Standard awards availability has drastically reduced. Therefore even for Asia Miles members this is not good news. Of course that also means partner programs get even less allotment. Basically bad news all around for both native program and partner programs.

On top of that if you have mixed cabins on different directions you can no longer be able to book it as a round trip as originating from Hong Kong, so on your inbound, you will be charged the YQ and that is another bad news even for Asia Miles members.