Sandeep1

FYI, in the thread from last year, I had posted about booking a SIN-HKG-ORD J award for 50k miles. A few weeks after booking, I noticed that there was no HKG-ORD flight on CX's website. People told me not to worry. Well, just received an email that CX was rebooking the award as SIN-HKD-JFK. Obviously that ain't gonna work so I just cancelled it.

Happy

Well, many of us would book positional flights to bridge the gap, on domestic portion that AS does not fly. For all the years we used AS awards we always had to book positional flights separately - but the much lower cost on better airlines is worth the trouble to us. YMMV of course.

CX has no plan to resume HKG-ORD route in near future.

It also has permanently dropped the HKG-IAD, HKG-EWR routes.

The "Where We Fly" section on their website has information on what routes are operating, albeit only up to March 2023. They publish the information on a rolling 3 months basis for quite some time now. They resume most HKG-Europe routes but the HKG-US routes still are only 4 airports and much less flights. It is not a surprise given the relationship between the 2 countries is at all time low - business travels are far from pre Covid level. It may very well remain this way thru the end of the year I am afraid.

Sandeep1

Of course, I've also booked positional flights as well. But not all positional flights are equal. For example, if I had been rerouted from HKG-LAX, rather than JFK, then I could book an LAX-ORD flight. But flying an extra 2 hours to JFK, only to then backtrack to ORD, is an extra 4.5-5 hours of flight time, and to me, that doesn't make sense when CX flights aren't the only game in town.

flytoeat

HKG-JFK-ORD is 8812 miles, while HKG-LAX-ORD is 9004, per Great Circle Mapper.

Happy

HKG-JFK is on Polar Route most of the year. It actually isn't flying not much longer than HKG-LAX except encounting bad weather which usually happens on the opposite direction.

There is also a time zone differences to think about - LAX is Western time, 2 hours behind of ORD Central Time, which is only one hour behind JFK Eastern Time. I always hate flying back from West Coast to East Coast - you lose 3 hours just because of the time zones.

eggsbenedict

Ugh, today I learned about phantom award availability.

Was trying to find a good way to burn through 60k miles after having forgotten about them for a couple years, saw plenty of availability on CX HKG-YVR so I initiated a transfer of Bonvoy points to get me up to 100k needed for two of us. Booked a trip out to HKG on QR via DOH, booked a nice hotel, told friends to save the date, etc. Few days later the points come through and I go to book the tickets and of course it turns out there isn't a single seat actually available on the HKG-YVR route at all.

What a waste of time and $50, super disappointing.

Stingyguy

You're not alone. I've been dealing with it since mid-December and I see those fantastic award availability only to get the error. BA/QF seems to give you somewhat of an accurate picture of what's available.

bronco29

Wonder how AS created all these phantom space? Are they aware of it? Is there any plan to correct them?

I saw on BA with premium economy availability but not business class. AS shows business class without any premium economy. Will calling AS be able to secure those spaces?

olouie

They don’t have live info and even though they are one of the few airlines to charge an extra booking fee for awards they don’t really invest into it. They are aware and it’s unlikely to be on priority list for fixing. It’s been ongoing issue for a long time. Their agents pretty much use same info so calling is kind of useless too unless you can badger your way into getting them to get a partner liaison to look at things. Much easier to just use another site to check.

skimthetrees

According to reports here AS is aware of the problem. Phone agents have reported it to IT. We have no idea if there are any plans to correct it.

AS's claim is that CX is not reporting the inventory correctly to AS. I don't buy into that theory. The airlines use different GDS's to get their inventory data and my suspicion is that the one AS uses does not carry the correct inventory bucket for CX awards so AS is using the wrong inventory bucket to check availability. IOW, the problem could be a combination of issues between the GDS and AS, and this will make it harder to resolve.

Pre-Pandemic the inventory did not always match between partners. BA was sometimes different from AS. I would check BA but I would also recommend checking other partners. QF is more likely to match AS availability. The most accurate availability match to AS availability pre-pandemic was JAL's Cathay Pacific partner specific search (not a OneWorld search).

If you want to book via AS MP, first check AS, if AS shows no availability move on and look at something else, if AS does show availability you need to check multiple other partners to confirm it exists. If multiple other partners are showing it then it most likely does exist. If one other partner does not show availability but another does it may or may not be available via AS, but you can attempt booking and hope.

Note, this advice is strictly for CX. Other partners are different.

Happy

I would also add that when you call AS, DONT waste your time with the first agent who most likely is the very junior, newly hired just a few months ago, no clue on partner award let alone the complicated CX ones. Politely let the agent know that you need International Partner Desk for Cathay Pacific partner award. It would cut down 60% of the frustration.

Though some partner desk agents are more experienced than others, this is just like all other airlines. More experienced agents know how to check things Really Quickly once you give the criteria (date range, city pairs, for example) Also experienced agents would immediately secure the longhaul TPAC seats IF that are available, then check on the rest. Getting such an agent is a luck of the draw thing. But those agents do exist. Your job is to cut thru the first layer or two to get to the "real" partner desk agents.

As someone posted late last year, you know when to end the call politely after the first 3 minutes of conversation. There is no reason to waste time even though it is at times wait time to get a live agent is horrendous.
Per this post late last year, https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34872711-post2275.html 800-426-0333 has call back option, and the wait time usually is much shorter. The poster provided this number mentioned several times his calls went thru to agents within minutes. I did not have such luck but was still a much better 58 min wait and I opted for call back. They did call back.

onetouchpass

Good advice.

I had a smooth interaction a few hours ago when I wanted to change an existing booking to another city pair that I confirmed (via BA/QF first, then after a separate call into AA for P2's booking) had award space. The agent was Holly from Boise. She understood what I wanted to do, and after being placed on hold for a bit while she worked it out (I had made a previous change to same PNR so I couldn't make another change online w/o calling). Ticketed and confirmed; easy peasy.

I called 1 800 252 7522, no wait time to be connected with the agent. Said "award booking" for the audio prompt.

Happy

Good DP. The number is AS regular number which at "calm" time it is fine. It is when there is weather interruption like a couple weeks ago, that number went haywire.

Did you change the TPAC city pair or the city pair of the Stopover portion?

There is difference because some DPs said the agents said you must have TPAC portion still have seats in order to do the change of the stopover portion. This is particularly bad on the AA agents. Some AS agents also said the same thing. In reality this is not the case. It is more like agent skills but people have reported such issues.

onetouchpass

I changed from HKG-BOS to HKG-JFK. Simple nonstops.

I found 3 seats today on BA where before there were none! Moved P2's AA booking with one call, and then my own AS booking with the above call.

vivrant

Added to Wiki!