Booking Cathay with Avios
 

Does anyone have experience of booking Cathay flights with avios?
Also, when do Cathay release award seats? Do they have black out days, like around Christmas and Chinese New Year?

prob best to ask on the BA forum or similar.

CX doesnt have avios currency

I have done ot lots of times and there is great value intra-Asia. Europe-HKG is a little trickier and you may struggle to het LHR flights. More available are places like Milan.
In recent times availability is a little bit more sketchy.

I also use my Avios for intra-Asia redemptions; indeed, some good values. There is not as much availability as via Cathay though (I am Diamond), but I usually check both programs, and issue via Avios if the availability is there. The other reason is that I am trying to burn down my Avios account, since I have not put much earning into it in recent years.

For short haul CX J class within Asia (e.g. BKK, japan, DPS) , redeem via Qatar can save a lot of avios as compared with redeeming via BA and Finnair. For long haul CX flight to/from Europe, mostly only Y/PE is available for redemption using avios va BA.

My wife and I are flying out this Monday on CX in J that I booked with Avios via BA's website 348 days in advance for the LAX-HKG-BKK route. I fly to Southeast Asia quite a bit, but I rarely see CX show up on BA's site for those routes.

Thank you all. I've been looking at flights for the last month via BA, Qatar and Finnair - saw only one CX reward flight and then it disappeared a minute later :(

Some posters here have the broader experience that BA does have awards on CX. Regional J awards are not too difficult to find. Longhaul J awards are hard to find while Y is easier.
All airlines now have sophisticated yield management IT, including for awards. CX gives priority to its own FFP. It is not unusual that a CX award is open for some time only to AM, especially for DMs, then finally open to partners if they are not taken. As mentioned above, CX tends to release more awards a few days before departure if the load is light.

Just looking at one month can be misleading. For example, February is Chinese New Year travel season. It could be that CX basically releases few, if any, awards to partners.

CX doesn't even release seats to its own non-status members on black out days (as you said, Christmas, CNY and generally any HK public holidays, plus school holidays to/from UK/Australia/North America).

I have one Avios redemption with CX for 2026 - and that's for the wife's birthday. CX generously released the inbound for Sunday.

Any ideas on how to book PE using QR Avios?

I heard to use Qatar Avios for a Cathay PE booking, you have to fill out some sort of online form and submit it, with the ticketing desk booking for you within a few days. They unfortunately don't have it online - only BA does (at least this was my latest understanding).