So what are the remaining sweet spots?

Short monopoly routes, perhaps.

Such as?

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e35541c7c1.png
Does anyone know what this means? or simply a glitch?

Under the date it looks like there is availabilities but upon selecting the date, it has no flights. This seems to happens quiet often across all routes and dates.

Glitch

I need to transfer my 540K Citibank AU points to either 216K CX or SQ (or even QR) points next month. I need to make some decisions.

Even with the devaluation in Oct, it is 58K CX miles vs 71.5KSQ miles for SYD-HKG route one way. So the point economics looks good. But how stingy is CX these days for J awards for their members? I am looking at 4 * J award on (mainly) SYD-HKG route for my family in the future. Happy to travel via other Australian cities and book domestic separately if needed. If not available now, what is the chance of CX providing more award spaces in the future?

Previously I could do it on SQ regularly, and even redeemed 4 * SQ between AU-SIN-Europe and back last year. But now it is very difficult to do so and most are straight to their Advantage award rate which is even more expensive (eg 90K SQ miles for SQ J SYD-SIN-HKG one-way).

I did check with QF, BA as well but it looks like CX has most inventory for their own members these days.

You should transfer points to whichever program that gives you the highest possibility of redemption for the route that you want.

Also CX and SQ FFPs are not "equivalent" so be careful about the supposed economics. CX requires fewer miles yes, but slaps you with higher airline charges, whereas SQ charges only airport taxes on top of the redemption ticket.

Yes I noticed that CX fees and charges are higher. I just don't know how available are CX J awards these days. It looks like they don't really release them much these days? Pre-covid I could see up to 4 J awards on some SYD-hkg flights.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d9f16a8b69.png

Any idea why MNL-NRT J redemption on JL is being priced at 74,000 asiamiles? Theres no 74k miles on the published new chart so is this a bug?

The published chart is for CX flights only. For mixed carrier awards (this is specifically a single partner or CX + one partner, NOT the oneworld multicarrier award) there has never been a published chart. The flight award chart page has this to say for partner awards:

No good news at all on the partner award front. While the new standard award chart at least gave us some price reductions at the long haul economy end, there are zero reductions for the partner chart. I guess the only saving grace is that the few special routes like TSA-HND, PVG-HND, etc. that used to have non-standard pricing still retain their special pricing on par with the regular CX chart.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...40539d0a78.png
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b98c0e6466.png

Thanks for figuring this out. I can’t like the message, but please accept my thanks for figuring it out.

I’m surprised Cathay uses one table for all partners. I always thought each partner is priced differently (akin to Avios).

Thank you for pointing out. I always thought that they use the oneworld multicarrier award since they had the same miles needed before the devaluation (atleast for the MNL-TYO route)

So basically there's no sweet spot now, Asia miles kills all value in the last 3 years (stopover policy and devaluation)

Indeed, most of the European routes I was targeting had been zeroed out up to yesterday (although by fluke I managed to snag two seats for Jun 2024 shortly before the devaluation started, most likely cancelled bookings from other passengers).

Out of curiosity, I went in today to check for some of the other European routes and dates that I was eyeing - voila! - many more dates now have availability albeit at the new inflated price. Very poor faith by CX.