How to spend half a million miles?
 

I'm reading the AM award charts and I see that mixed carrier awards are, say, 205K miles for a 20000 mile trip. I need to buy two tickets.

Does it mean that for 205K per ticket miles I could do the following?

HKG-JFK on CX 8059 miles (in F)
JFK-LHR on BA 3442 miles (in F)
LHR-MAD on IB 774 miles (in J)
MAD-VCE on IB 874 miles (in J)
VCE-LHR on BA 715 miles (in J)
LHR-HKG on CX 5983 miles (in F)

Total 19847 miles travelled?

No... you earn 8059 miles when you travel HKG-JFK in Y class, but it is totally different for upgrades and award tickets.

A quick search on AsiaMiles.com shows that you need 220,000 miles to redeem a round trip award ticket, HKG-JFK, in F.

Go to the Asia Miles homepage to look it up.

I think you've misread my post entirely. I know (obviously) that what I quoted are the mileage distances. I also know that HKG-JFK RT in F on CX is 220K miles.

However, I'm asking about a mixed carrier award where the rate for a 20000 mile journey is 205K miles. I want to know if what I'm trying to do is a legal routing or not.

I think this could be a legal routing.
Are all cities intended as stop-over, or will you skip LHR as a stop on the way back?

Good luck spending any AsiaMiles with CX in premium cabins - it appears to be pretty much impossible to do, and it seems they would rather fly the seat empty.

On the way back I skip LHR as a stopover, just in transit.

Also, I was planning to do MAD in transit only. Only reason I have it in there is so that I have 3 carriers so can do a mixed award at lower rates instead of CX only exorbitant rates.

I've had pretty good luck with this in the past, but I guess on a more complex routing it could take some luck to get this right.

Op should be looking at oneworld awards table for 2 non cx airlines. Will be cheaper than asiamiles multi carrier award. I would suggest flipping vce and mad around so you could connect to other cx gateways instead of using lhr. (more flexibility in terms of seat availability, just my 2 cents n depends if u could flip it...) only 2 transit availabl tho

Agreed. There's some confusion up thread. The OP was looking at the OW chart and not the Asia Miles chart nor the Airlines Partners chart. Hence, it's 205K for 20K miles in F with up to 16 segments, unlimited stopovers, etc etc. with as kaka mentioned, at least 2 other airlines with or without using CX. I'm sure the OP is aware that LHR as a transit will save a ton on APD.
Nice trip. :)

The itinerary looks right to me.

I've done many of these multi-destination award flights using the OW multi-carrier awards chart. They are great value, especially in J or F.

Note that if you redeem a J ticket, and fly on AA domestic, you will be seated in Y, not F (since they don't have a J on domestic).

Make sure you have a maximum of five stopovers, two transfers and two open-jaws. You can count a stopover as a transfer (e.g. four stopovers and three transfers).

For IB, you can check availability on their website. You'll have to sign up as an IB member first, which is relatively painless. Same with AA and BA - you can check award availability as well.

That way you can plan the entire trip and check the availability before calling MPC.

Good luck!

It must have to do with your Green status...as a DM, I can't think of a recent time when I haven't been able to redeem my miles in premium cabins. Although sometimes awards clear late (sometimes 1-2 days in advance), they almost always clear, especially if their is some degree of flexibility in travel plans (take a later flight that day, for example).

christep was a DM for many years. He should know how DM redemption was like. His comment is probably a general one, which I agree.

In regards to late clearing, it is easier even for other MPC members. My wife and my daughter were listed for upgrades using my account (DM) last month. The booking expired 3-4 days prior to the flight. Then a few hours later, we were able to get the upgrades online using my wife's account (SL).

I'm aware that DM redemption is (or at least was when I was a DM) much, much easier. Sadly, CX's view of "loyalty" is extremely short term so despite very close to a million Club Miles I'm no different from somebody who's never flown CX and is just wanting to redeem AsiaMiles they got from shopping.

I agree. I can see CX might want to protect their DM tier (then again all evidence suggests they have no problem throwing them away either), but it's nice to show some loyalty back to the pax who have been so loyal to CX for so many years committed at high volume travel.

Perhaps a new tier of "Gold Forever" (similar to Diamond Invitational) that you get all the benefits of Gold and on op-up order you are below Gold.

At least give us loyal high volume pax who will probably rack up 1 million miles that much. Set the bar high (at 1mm Club Miles) but reward the few that are so loyal....

I never redeemed miles as a GR, SL or GO so don't really know if there is a difference among those tiers? Or is really DM just in a different class than the other three when trying to redeem awards miles? It really is in fact a shame how fast you can go back down the rungs on CX...I do think it would be a nice gesture to someone like yourself if they at least comp SL for pax with a million miles or better (especially if SLs had an easier time redeeming tix, given how many of your miles are probably earned through flying). Half of HK has SL anyway so it can't be too much of a burden to them.