Hi
We are about to move to Hong Kong as a family for a few years. I and the children will probably fly once a year (either Y or C class) to and from London, and my husband will fly frequently (10+ times a year to destinations including London, New York, Sydney, Tokyo etc) in C. Which airline are we best off favouring from a miles accumilation prespective (and also bearing in mind which offer the best redemptions opportunities on either our trips back to the UK or inter-asia holidays (or possibly a trip to Vancouver)? We have lots of VS miles already so in some ways feel it is worth continuing to contribute to that pot, but don't see many seats avialble for miles redemption back to London in upper class, have a few hundred thousand BA miles but nothing too exciting, and none of us are even currently a members of Marco Polo club at all (all 3 children are under 4 - can they join?). Need to make a decision as i'm about to book 5 x C class returns Lon-HK to get us all out there, so need to decide which airline to go with!
Thanks

Have you considered QF or NZ ?

Living in HK you are bound to take trips around Asia and it sounds like your husband will easily be able to get top tier for most airlines. If you are based out of HK then your best bed is to use CX and join the Marco Polo club (which incorporates Asia Miles as well as Club Status - Asia Miles give you free flights / mileage upgrades, etc., and Club miles are what gives you status on the airline - the higher your status the more the benefits). If you are based out of HK the most likely airlines you use will be CX for international travel and KA (Dragonair) for China flights - both of which are in the same group (Oneworld - and KA is owned by CX).

Children cannot join Marco Polo club but they can join Asia Miles.

Obviously from HKG CX is going to give your husband the most flight choices they will fly to pretty much every destination they go to.

Your BA miles will be good for redemptions on BA or CX and from what I have seen availability from London to HKG is decent on both airlines. There is no doubt that availability on BA for large family trips is best in class though I do find it is generally easier to score lots of seats in First rather than CW.

CX has the direct flights to Vancouver (along with San Fran, LA, Toronto and JFK) and again availability is decent. In F I don't think they ever release more than 2 seats but I have seen 4 in C quite often (in fact about to book 4 of us JFK-YVR in January for ski trip)

Having said all that BA's family account is very powerful and a big bonus. It may be you will want to fly on CX but earn on BA.

Your Virgin miles you can use with Air China, Malaysia or Air New Zealand for flights from HKG

Haven't considered QF or NZ - should i?
I'm a bit confused about the Marco Polo/Asia miles distinction.....would you mind explaining a bit more how they differ? Would the children be able to earn the miles on this upcoming C class trip or not? How do they join Asia miles (only see the Marco Polo joining bit on the website?). I take it there is no equivalent to the BA family account with CX?
In terms of product, i've never flown CX before so does it compare favourably with the competition in C and Y class (sadly don't imagine we'll get much use out of f but you never know i guess - reward redemptions willing!!)?
Thank you!

First of all, welcome to Hong Kong, home of many CX flyer

For all ex-HKG flight, no one can beat CX / KA in terms of frequency and likely the choice of your husband and family. Which narrows down your FF selection within OW. You are of course more than welcome to join the family here as a MPC member

The decision should be between BA and CX, and if your husband can attain upper elite status at BA (which he will need to fly required sector on BA for his LON trip to keep his elite, but enabling bonus miles at upper elite, not available with MPC)

For both BAEC and CX MPC they shouldn't have much problem comp-ing your husband to elite status.

However be noted that CX MPC member can wait list on redemption flight (CX / KA) while other OW FFP cannot, and having an elite status should put you on priority list for redemption waitlisting

I think you can attain additional chance by doing LON - SIN - HKG with SQ, which they have big A380 flying around, or using NZ for LON - HKG, or NH for LON - NRT - HKG, to burn of the legacy miles from VS

As other say for CX LON HKG should not a big issue

You should consider NZ for your LON HKG burn-off, but not their FF Club
QF is not really related here
Asia Miles (AM) is the mileage bank, open to all ages (except infant I guess ?)
Macro Polo Club (MPC) is the elite status, 18+ only
http://www.asiamiles.com
For MPC, I normally tell my friends to register at Asia Miles first, then pay via CX site (for your case, ask them to comp you with a already registered Asia Miles Account
Nope, there isn't any
There are quite a list of debate on the New Y / J product on CX, CX long haul J is not family friendly, unless they are sort of grown up or all you want to do on long haul are sleep and enjoy yourself

Marco Polo is what gives you different status on CX and the oneworld alliance as a frequent flyer. Asia Miles offers no status. Sounds like your husband will make Gold or Diamond status with CX. Gold will allow business lounge, extra luggage allowance & business class checkin for him & you all if travelling with him.

Diamond will allow more luggage and First class lounge / check in.

The lounge and check in benefits are when travelling on all Oneworld airlines.

For Asiamiles visit www.asiamiles.com and you can sign up there.

I would definitely join Asia Miles (children) or The Marco Polo Club (requires US$50 fee, but they may waive it - some others can elaborate) in your scenario. CX/KA definitely offers the best options and destinations nonstop ex-HKG while Asia Miles allows for redemption of items (electronics, tickets etc.) rather than just award air tickets.

Joining The Marco Polo Club/Asia Miles does not mean that you are tied with Cathay or Dragonair to earn miles. To earn "Club miles/sectors" (for The Marco Polo Club), you can fly on any of the oneworld alliance airlines. For Asia Miles, there is a wider selection - available here (https://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/earn/airlines), you can also earn with hotel stays (major brands), car rentals etc.

Welcome to HK. I moved a year ago and find it great fun compared to morose old Europe. Being based in HK, you should (must) choose a OW FFP, as suggested above. Given your British trips, it should be either CX or BA.

I will just address two of your questions:
- As opposed to many, I find the new CX C seat quite nice and well adapted to long flights. But I find that BA C bed, especially on the 747 UD beats it by a significant margin. Of course to get 747 UD you need status with BA, but that will be no problem with your flying pattern. Without status on BA you are mostly stuck with main cabin, which is much less atractive.
- I would suggest BAEC rather than CX Asiamiles/MPC. One major reason is the family account, where your children and wife can channel their few miles to your family account and they can then be used as you wish for any family member. With asiamiles, your other family members will earn too few miles each year to be of practical use. Also the the bonus miles for elite. Of course, you will be flying CX a lot, but as a BA Gold (equivqlent to MPC Diamond), I found that CX treats me well. Remember that you need four BA flights on BA to retain your BA elite status. If you move back to UK in a few years, your aisamile account will be much less useful, while your BAEC will still be.
Regarding your VS miles, I would just use them for an award and forget about VS (once based in HK) if earning/redeeming miles is a significant factor.
This is my personal opinion, but I am confident that others will disagree.

If all, or nearly all of your flying ins in J and you're doing a lot of it then I would think about flying BA or CX but booking the miles to AAdvantage. You get a much better earn rate (once you have status) and a much better burn rate on flying. You also get lifetime status. If I was starting over again that's what I would have done, and I would have been AA lifetime Plat (OW Sapphire) now instead of CX Silver, soon to be Green.

On the flip side, there is no credit card in Hong Kong which earns AA miles, so you'll probably want an AsiaMiles account for that anyway, and if your husband were able to get to buy all his travel on a credit card for which he could get the miles then these would add up very fast indeed.

this is all so valuable - thank you very much. I am still v torn - sounds as though VS should be ruled out and decision is between BA and CX. I think the family account on BA slightly tips in that favour as it will give us the most flexibility in terms of rewards, but gosh i hate BA as an airline at the moment and tend to avoid flying them whenever possible. the whole CX thing sounds a bit complicated with the MPC/Asia miles thing and i can see how we might end up with 1 decent account (husbands) with me and the children having tiddly rather useless accounts building up nothing much since they aren't linked (other than that initial C class return, all other flights are likely to be cheapo economy, although granted with lots of inter-asia travel planned i guess they would eventually start to build up - i think we'll be flying to places like Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam etc 4-5 times a year minimum, plus the one big trip back to the UK in the summer and probably Vancouver once a year at easter). Does CX have a premium economy route on long haul - realistically if we cannot get reward flights for our trips back to the UK then i don't think i'll be paying for C, but 12 hours on my own with 3 children under 4 in economy makes me shudder - is there anything inbetween like world traveller plus?
Final thought - i have found with VS that despite having over a million airmiles the cost of booking reward flights in UC has got so expensive with taxes and surcharges etc we haven't actually booked any for a while - which makes me wonder whether if this trend continues i should focus my efforts on a programme that has good hotel partners that literally use up your miles without all of the extras you have to pay. Typically we use groups like Four Seasons etc but in Asia will be more flexible as i think standards are higher anyway - 5 star but not necessarily needing Aman/Four Seasons levels. Who would be best of BA and CX (or VS) in that scenario?
Thank you

It seems the case, however as your husband probably get a CX DM pretty easy the privilege to cover your family in terms of longue access. It should not be that difficult for you to maintain MPC SL (2 LON HKG in J + 1 short hop within Asia will make it)

It's all the bonus points of BAEC to make it more attractive for elites. However when you travel on discounted Y on BA / CX to earn BA points, you miles collected with get degrade significantly as well, which make the balance more complicated.

BAEC Earn Chart for CX flight:
Y, B, H : 100%, 500 min
K, L, M, N, O, Q, S, V: 25%, 500 min
CXAM Earn Chart for CX flight:
Y , B , H , K , M , L , V: 100%

Vice Versa

BAEC for BA flight
Y, B, H : 100%, 500 min
Other: 25%, 500 min
CXAM for BA flight
Y, B, H: 100%
K, L, M: 50%


Sorry there's no Y+ from CX although there's a rumor for it. However you can do Y ==> Y+ or Y+ ==> J upgrade on BA metal
Some people work around this by flying out of AMS / CDG and do train / separate Y ticket for LON - AMS / CDG
There's a long list of hotel / package available for redeem using AM, but I don't aware of any for BA EC

Super Long List for AM: http://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redee...search=Search#

Consider that QF will be withdrawing F class from its B747s in the not too distant future. These planes ply the HKG-LHR route and there will be a period when J class pax will be able to sample F class seating on the B747 at a J class price.

NZ may not suit you as its a Star carrier but its new PE (probably not available ex-HKG until 2011 at the earliest) will be the best around.

But who you fly and where you put the miles are two separate (but linked) questions. You can fly QF in J, for example, and put the miles into any oneworld FF programme. Hence my argument above for flying CX or BA but putting the miles into AAdvantage.

I agree with some of the other posters about putting your miles in American Airlines AAdvantage. I have been flying yyz - HKG and around the region 4 times a year fro the last couple of years and have collected on AA. AA is one of the easiest to get to top tier (executive platinum = oneworld emerald) and once you have status it has excellent bonusing. Combine that with the fact that CX is one of the most generous oneworld airlines in extending status perks like priority check in, baggage and lounge access to OW emeralds and you have a great combination.

Further, when you come to redeem points and have exp status the dedictaed exp customer service staff are top notch and you virtually never have to wait on hold.