Hi all.

This is probably a pretty common question but I have spent hours on the phone with various CC companies and have no answers so sorry and I appreciate any help.

I live in the U.S. I have reason to need to start flying frequently to Hong Kong and my airline of choice is Cathay Pacific. I have recently joined Asia Miles.

My question is this. How do I get a credit card with rewards that can be converted to Asia Miles points? I see that if I lived in Hong Kong that would be easy as I could get a HK credit card and accumulate miles that way. But, I can only get U.S. credit cards and I have called Citibank and AMEX and they seem oblivious. So, maybe it's impossible and I should give up or maybe the customer service people don't know what they are talking about.

So essentially, is it possible to apply for a U.S. credit card and somehow use my purchases towards Asia Miles. If so, how?

Sorry for the stupid question ahead of time and thanks.

Amex Starwood Preferred Guest card. Get SPG points and then convert 1:1 to Asia Miles, plus 5,000 bonus Asia Miles for every 20,000 points converted.

Which is a waste, even with the bonus miles, in my opinion.

Use spg points for hotels, not air miles.

Alternately, get a Citibank AAdvantage card, which earns AAdvantage points. The redemption rate for CX is much better than Asia Miles; however, they cannot be used for CX upgrades, only free tickets.

Thanks for the kind replies. I will decide between the Starwood and Citibank AAdvantage card then.

Welcome to Flyertalk, yunghun.

If you are located close to a CX gateway (LAX, SFO, JFK), I would recommend the British Airways card with Chase. BA's one-partner reward by far has the best redemption value in Y/J (50k miles in Y or 100k in J, vs AA - 70k in Y or 110k in J). Its fallback - you MUST depart from a CX's gateway. Otherwise you would have to pay out of pocket to get to that gateway.

Between SPG AMEX and the Citi AA, I would prefer the SPG AMEX. SPG AMEX's annual fee is lower ($45). You also practically spend $20K and get 25K miles with many airlines at your choice (CX, AA, AC, BA, DL, JL, OZ, US, etc.) Apparently you open up a lot of options for yourself. I do agree with Cathay Boy, though, that you can get higher value with the SPG points with hotel stays.

With the Citi AA, you pay a higher annual fee $50/$85, and when you spend $20K, you "only" get 20K miles.

EDIT: now thinking a little more, I would even prefer the SPG AMEX over the BA-Chase Visa due to the 5K transfer bonus miles for every 20K miles you transfer.

EDIT 2: Alaska Airlines is also a partner of CX. You can also use the SPG AMEX to accumulate points, transfer them to AS, and redeem for a CX flight (just like how you do with the AA/BA/CX programs). I would recommend doing some research on each of these programs and find out which one is the best for you.

Alaska would be your best bet. Easy to accumulate and transfer. Watch the Citibank card as they often have ridiculous signining bonus offers, which helps accumulate quickly!!! Also, they do have discounted award travel on Cathay occassionally, which i nice-