Is this a valid routing for an award? All these are transits, less than 24 hours between flights. And how many miles would it be? I thought it is a valid round trip.

I have them researching it, but the service center (sounds like Philippines) say it's invalid. They are getting back to me shortly.

OUTBOUND
SYD-MEL QF
MEL-LHR QF (via Dubai - same flight)
LHR-MUC BA

RETURN
MUC-LHR BA
LHR-HKG CX
HKG-SYD CX

Is it a type of award? What do I need to do to get this through? This is J class if that matters.

Thanks.

[Breaking this into a separate thread as original thread is old]

sxc
Cathay Pacific moderator

You need to make some transits as stopovers. Some agents cant get their head around that.
You only have 2 transits and the rest needs to be stopovers. Of course you would put the transits at LHR.

Look at oneworld award chart for that. Sorry i'm a bit too lazy. You need the total flown mileage for mapping the miles needed

It's definitely valid.
It's a "oneworld Multi-Carrier Award" http://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redeem/charts#2

The prerequisites to OW award is having two OW carriers not counting CX or KA in your itinerary (BA and QF --> OK) (itinerary can include CX and KA sectors in addition to the other OW carriers)
Your award will be assessed on the OW Multi-Carrier Awards chart
And you can have five stopovers, two transits and two open jaws <-- you can cannibalise stopovers if you need more transits

Note AM cannot redeem EK metal, so your MEL-LHR (via DXB) has to be on QF9.

Thanks everyone. I was able to do this - sort of. I called the Philippines, but they kept rejecting me, saying a transit couldn't be made into a stopover, even after we had all the availability locked in. I then called Hong Kong/China, and they did it without issue, with my broken Cantonese.

However, the taxes were very high. I then told them to remove the UK APD, and that brought it down about HKD2,000 to around HKD8,000.

What is left is the YQAC fee of around HKD$3,700. I looked at a previous booking for SYD-MEL-HKG-AMS / AMS-HKG-SYD, also in J, and the YQAC was only HKD$117. Is there sometihg incorrect about YQAC?

Does anyone know of the discrepancy? Is it valid? Can I do anything about it? I'm happy to ticket as it stands, but thought I would ask about this first.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

YQAC - I think I worked out why it's so high. The QF MEL-DXB-LHR are expensive. About HKD$3,000. If I were able to get MEL-HKG-LHR on CX, that would drop. But I'd be subject to an extra CX fee of HKD$1,700.

You really can't escape these carrier fees, can you?

at leaast you can cut 1300HKD off! any less than that you'll need to use AA Miles

actually you can use english on the canto line. just that if you're unlucky you'd get an agent whose english as as choppy as your chinese

That's a good point. Unfortunately SYD/MEL-HKG is not availalble for the dates I want. Plus it will be nice to take the big double decker over the water.

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Can you make it per/ade? O well if you want a380 then cx wont help :P

I did try and check ADE-HKG. No availability either.

If you don't mind me hijacking your thread, I would like to validate the following:

- HKG-DUS (CX)
- open jaw
- MUC-HEL(transfer)-KTT (stopover) (AY)
- KTT-HEL(transfer)-HKG (AY)

Looking at the Asia Miles Award Chart, it says:
"This awards chart applies to redemption for single or mixed (two) carrier awards. For mixed carrier awards, Cathay Pacific or Dragonair must be included."

That is given in this example. There is still that discprepancy between ZH and EN version regarding 2 stopovers, 2 transfer and / or 1 open jaw but I assume all three are allowed. Then I have 1 stopover, 2 transfers, 1 open jaw so it should be legal, right?

Then I wonder how it prices out? I'm assuming the point furthest from HKG is MUC, so it would be the distance between MUC-HEL-HKG = 5,840 miles so the total cost for above award should be 60,000 AM in Y. Am I correct?

Edit:
Even if HEL-KTT-HEL would count towards the inbound to determine the award zone, with 6,862 miles I would still land in the 60,000 AM zone in my logic.

Yes you are right, it is legal. You can have 2 stopovers + 2 transit + 1 openjaw, where neither point at the two ends of the openjaw counts as a "stopover".

For calculation, you need to add up all the sectors and break it in the middle (not halve the total distance) to determine which zone you are on. Anyway you are safe within the 60k miles zone.

You can even do KTT-HEL(transfer)-any port with CX service (use stopover as transfer) - HKG if you prefer on CX metal for the long haul.

Awesome, thanks! I'm actually looking at later next year when I could sample AY's A350-900s. 😊