Cathay status when living in US?
 

I am moving from Hong Kong to the San Francisco Bay Area soon and am wondering if it is worthwhile keeping my Cathay Diamond status or if I should focus on a US domestic program. Anyone have experience staying on Cathay status while living in the US? It seems like the main advantage is being able to access oneworld lounges when flying domestic within the US, but it will be harder to maintain status.

Depends where u fly to.

If fly often between usa and hk, maybe ok to keep CX but otherwise, better to go with ua/dl/aa.

Some cheaper economy partner fares dont earn status points or miles on cx.

If u are currently cx diamond, maybe can ask for status match as well from the usa airlines.

Do you fly AS or AA?

I fly both and expect that most of my travel will be domestic.

IMO if you do not exclusively buy and travel on Biz/First fares, AA/AS is better than CX for FFP. As an AA/AS elite, you get access to premium class on AS and Main Cabin Extra on AA, which would take away a lot of pain traveling on domestic Y. Depending on the route, you might even get an upgrade to F. Lounges in the US are generally not that exciting, and the lounge access benefit is purchase-able either through an annual fee or a premium credit card, anyway. I don't think it's a huge deal.

If you do fly on Biz/First a lot... I would recommend you look into the BA program. Similar flavor as the CX Club Point system, but it's slightly easier to get OWE. Also, you get access to Main Cabin Extra on AA with BA OWE

Upgrades to own members on US domestic was up til recently a strong reason to switch (localise). But this benefit (at least on AA) seems to be diluted by recent moves to bid upgrade.

How long in USA for? For ever or a few months/years?
Objective from a ffp?
BA requires 2/4 BA-IB flights for status. Check the BA forum & BA web site for the details. IB does not have an own flights rule
Avios is used as ff currency by BA, IB, IE, QR Qatar and now AY

The move is planned to be permanent.

Being able to get the occasional upgrade and being able to avoid things like fees for seat assignments, checked bags, etc., as well as recognition for top tier are the main priorities. I suppose ease of requalifying is important as well.

One downer is US FFPs do not provide local lounge entry ie a BAEC Silver or JGC can enter Admirals Club but a AA Gold/Plat Pro/EXP cannot.

AA/BA top tiers do give premium lounge access. If you fly transcon premium, BA GGL is not much harder to maintain once obtained under the current requirements and earn structure.

My limited observations in the past year post upgrade bidding have been that AA upgrades remain for own CK/EXP, incl. transcon where the F/J demand for some SFO/LAX flights is still lower than pre-COVID. YMMV.

Notwithstanding the above, my decision has been to keep CX status in the US, as I still fly sufficient CX and Asia, and haven't needed the US upgrades. For NY lounges, personally quite like Soho and find it not much inferior to Chelsea outside of F&B.

I had been maintaining CX Gold (rather painfully) for a number of years but since CX fares have been through the roof, I haven’t been flying CX much and have been more frequent on QR so I’ve since switched over. Much easier to qualify/ maintain. I am on track to getting to QR Plat / OWE by end of the year and the same flights would not have gotten me to CX Diamond. AA J fares also do particularly well on QR status earning; BA not so much. In general I find OWS good enough for the free seat selections and lounge access so am not too fussed to maintain OWE.

When I was looking into this earlier, I was advised on the One World Alliance board that Iberia has the easiest OW program to gain and maintain status. I decided not to go that route because I haven’t flown Iberia ever in my life, but the don’t have a requirement to fly them at all.

For reference I’m based in NYC and fly to KUL 2-3x a year (more like 3-4x lately) and a handful of times to Europe.

CX fares do appear to be coming down so I hope to be able to fly them again and may even be eligible for the First Class lounges by then 🤗

I would suggest going to either the AS/AA local program. Why?

- If you are/were CX DM, you'll probably be used to lounge access. When I first got OWS/OWE, I was thrilled by it. Now, not as much. Lounges in the US are not places you want to be lurking around particularly long, except the flagship ones. However, are you going to be frequenting airports which have those or not? You can always buy an Admirals Club/credit card lounge membership if you really need

- The longer I've had status, the benefit of 'the airline will look after you first when things go wrong' shines through more. It's one of those benefits which isn't useful until it is, and then you will be grateful for it.

I became DM the hard way (almost weekly HKG-SIN coach travel) back in 2011, a few weeks before I moved to SIN, and have largely been based near NYC for a couple of years. Still a DM.

However, a big part of the decision to stick with CX had/has been the fact that, save for the covid period/immediately after, CX made/still makes up a substantial part of our longhaul travel (wife been a GO through most of the same period). While not great of late, we still have a distinct preference for CX for our reasonably regular travels back to SIN.

For now, sticking with CX. Enhanced award availability for DMs helps (very decent and each time I’ve checked), as do the mileage/BUD upgrades (JFK-HKG is my primary CX longhaul route now, and it ain’t great for op-ups, see a lot of last minute mileage/cash upgrades these days).

Do agree with CarefreeBA about the lounges in the US- I do skip them reasonably often- including the fairly decent SoHO lounge at JFK a couple of times (family of four with 2 sub 5 yo kids- a walk around watching planes works better at times!).

Also, CX is a relatively ‘hard’ program for status, and awards in general are ‘expensive’. Sure American programs have poor burn rates most of the time for travel on their own metal (lots of value on partners), but I can find reasonable (relative to coach) forward cabin fares more often than not. AA not giving MCE to CX elites also plays a role.

So unless CX is more than a reasonable part of travel plans, I would move.

Although, I’d rather be a OWE on AA exEWR/JFK, than a UA 1K exEWR! (Probably a similar situation for DL elites, but UA 1K, I can speak from my wife’s experiences- AA ExPlat probably the best, given how uncrowded the AA footprint is, here!)

One more factor for your consideration is the difficulty on redeeming AA domestic flights with CX AM.