Best time to book Business with cash
 

Hi All,
Is there a particular time frame (8 months, 6 months, etc) that will have the best fare prices on Business class from HKG to JFK? Im traveling to Asia over the holidays and will be returning to the US on Jan 4th, 2025. I've been trying to book an award ticket since the first day of availability with BA Avios, but the 4th and 5th have had zero availability since they became bookable on BA. Most likely they were booked with Asia miles prior to BA availability but I look daily hoping something will pop up. I definitely can't afford the $7,000 current one way price tag for business, but is there a chance this price may drop in a few months? Hoping for a more manageable price that I would be ok paying should an award ticket never pop up. Ideally an award seat will pop up at some point and I can just pay the cancellation fee, cancel the cash booking, and get a refund.
Any advice is helpful, Thanks.

BA Avios has horrible availability when redeeming for CX flights. I asked a similar question in the Flying Blue forum - it seems that award availability in J/F are almost impossible out of the Greater China region these days. Maybe the prices will come down when the frequencies increase.

Nah I don't think prices are high due to frequencies, its just demand is really up at the moment (especially from mainland). CX is operating 3 daily flights with 77W, 359 and 35K to JFK and this matches pre-covid periods in terms of frequency (precovid was all 77W though I think not sure). CX wouldn't be able to find any new slots any time soon I believe, so I don't see an increase in JFK frequency any time soon. Maybe it might increase frequency / capacity to BOS ORD or bring back EWR to help increase supply.

Have you considered starting elsewhere/ TPE-HKG-JFK on that day is around US$4,200, for example (and making it a return only adds US$1,000 or so to that). Starting in Guangzhou is even cheaper (US$3,600) and it's a fairly short train ride or road journey from Hong Kong.

I will be in Hong Kong from Jan 1st, as part of a group tour itinerary, so I hadn't even considered starting at another airport for my journey home, but I will look into it a bit and see if it is at all feasible. Thank you.

precovid CX was 4 times a day to JFK and daily to EWR.

They are well under covid capacity

sent OP a PM how tO game the system

3.6k usd