To use EY I'd have to do 2 awards, one US-Middle East, one Middle East-Asia 2. That takes a lot more miles.

I wouldn't mind JL, especially in F. I actually prefer it to CX F. But there are no routings that don't involve an overnight at NRT or excessively long layovers. I've searched and searched in combination with UL flights between CMB-NRT. Nothing works well with my origin of MCI. Living in the Midwest sucks when it comes to award flights overseas. I'm open to suggestions.

Right now, the best routing is MCI-PHX-LAX-HKG-CMB straight through for a LONG journey or MCI-PHX-LAX, overnight break, LAX-HKG-CMB outbound.
Return is better at CMB-HKG-ORD-MCI with 23 hours travel time.

Part of the problem is the HKG-CMB-HKG flight times late at night and most CX flights into HKG from USA arriving in the morning.

You're fully correct. Thank you for catching it.
And to be honest, I don't want to fly them neither.

Certainly your prerogative, but let's-- hopefully-- not have that discussion in this thread.

I usually take the morning flight ex-JFK and arrive early afternoon. IME most other flights arrive late afternoon or early evening. My connection to BKK ends up with my arriving after 2300 nearly every time.

Nonstop CX 611 HKG-CMB leaves at 8:10pm on M, W, F: 8:30pm on Sa.
That is the flight I will want to connect on to after coming in from the US.

I cannot use the morning flight ex JFK because I cannot get there from MCI in time. I am trying to avoid a 12 hour daytime layover at HKG. I can't do an overnight layover at HKG because the latest ex-USA flight gets in with more than a 24 hour connection time. It's a pity AA doesn't allow stopovers on award tickets like UA does. it would make trip planning so much easier.

Finding CX NYC-HKG reward tickets
 

I have the miles to book a first class round trip ticket from New York to Hong Kong. I was looking at dates in April and May and only saw a seat or two for outbound and have not been able to find any tickets for Hong Kong to New York. How far in advance should I be booking reward tickets? When Do Cathay reward seats release? I was looking for seats via the japan airlines website, should I be using a different source?

Yes, but it is even better for the CX 120K in J and 140K in F to South Africa, except HKG-JNB does not have F service any more.

US before it merges to AA program, also has a 110K J to South Africa with a stop over too. This is what we have now for a trip in Feb/Mar using QR and IB via DOH and have our stopover at IST (with separate cheapo domestic tickets on TK).

The same trip using AA miles would be 150K WITHOUT a stopover, and 200K in F!

No 330 days ahead crazy booking for me. Never book anything this far out. The longest lead time I had booked was 9 months out, and always due to devaluation of one kind or another. Else we much prefer booking within 3 months window and could do so in the distant past...

On this tentative trip I am talking about 6 to 8 weeks advance booking, and want to gauge whether Europe-HKG has similar inventory release pattern as US-HKG.

I did some random checking using 6 to 8 weeks prior departure window, and found FRA and especially LHR seem to have the most availability. MXP and DME seem to be the worst. I forgot about ZRH. Thanks for bringing it up.

In short, the earliest I could know the potential date(s) of travel in Mid May would be Mid March. Do not want to make a speculate booking as it hinges on whether we would do a TATL cruise in Mid April - that we would not know until Mid March.

Hi -

Search for other threads on this topic. There is a wealth of information on various ticketing strategies in this forum.

The JL website is one of several that people have found useful.

Whose miles are you using (CX or AA)?

Hey all, I was directed here from a thread I posted in the information desk section. In terms of summer availability (leaving the US in June, and avoiding Canada if possible) availability in plain old Y seems scarce outside of EWR and ORD. No BOS, JFK, LAX or SFO I can find. Getting back in late July/early Aug is even worse (only flights I can find are to EWR). I can make the EWR routing work although it's not ideal. As it's six months out should I book now, or anticipate that more space will open up?

While i can't answer your question, I'd like to clarify that all of my posts on this board about inventory opening up close in relate to First and Business awards. So I just wanted to make sure you were aware. Good luck, I suspect best to grab something now rather than wait.

MH was taken private by Khazanah, the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund. They will not go bankrupt.

At least out of LAX and SFO, CX flights are regularly full or oversold in Y resulting in op ups Y to J (or now PE) and J to F. With no revenue availability, there would be no award availability.

Is it just me, or:

Does the BA engine have trouble displaying availability with the "new" routes such as ZRH and BOS? I can never get those to show up on the BA site, but I can routinely find them through the JL site (obviously I prefer to use the BA site)

Interesting. I'll check there for BOS flights for the summer.

Thanks for your input everyone.