Hello,

I live in NYC and am about to transfer to the HK office of my employer for a couple years. I am platinum on AA which would give me Sapphire OneWorld status on Cathay. I am trying to determine if I should switch to the Cathay program since I will be flying them heavily while based there.

I have read through the MarcoPolo club program stuff and it seems like there isn't much benefit in my joining their club even though I expect to be flying cathay on a weekly basis within Asia with occasional trans-pacific flights.

The potential advantages of the CX program appear to be:
- Excess checked baggage allowance
- Excess cabin baggage
- Priority baggage handling

Are any of these benfits uniquely valuable on CX (e.g., are they strict on carry-on weight or slow delivering bags upon arrival)? Are there good upgrades for Gold or Diamond Marco Polo Club members (note I will generally be booking business class to start with)?

Is there any other reason I am not seeing to switch to the CX program?

I appreciate any thoughts...

The priority baggage handling is nice - it does work pretty well, certainly at ports within Asia; normally at ports elsewhere. But they are quite relaxed about cabin baggage also for Diamond members at least, so I very rarely have check-in bags when travelling within the region. I've only ever used the excess checked baggage once, but it saved me quite a lot of money on that occasion.

The other benefit for Diamonds is that you get guaranteed availability on any published economy fare (& full fare J) at 24 hours notice. For leisure trips in the region this can be worth a lot. Golds get guaranteed availability in any economy fare at 72 hours notice.

Award bookings also seem to be much easier to get for Diamonds than for others - I never seem to have much difficulty, for example, getting business upgrade awards to London with a couple of weeks notice, which others have claimed is near impossible.

But note that you have to go through all the tiers on CX - to get to Diamond from scratch requires 210,000 club miles. (30K to silver, reset then 60K to gold, reset then 120K to Diamond). I got there in 14 months - it's best to do it when you first come to the region since that is when you are most likely to be doing your "familiarisation" tour! Being AA Plat you get the priority check-in, lounge access and so on while you're working your way up the CX ladder (although if you are in J anyway this is less of an issue).

IMHO the advantage of joining MP Club is that you can access the lounges in US even if you just travel within north america.

That too if you are US-based. (Did you really need to quote the whole of the OP's original message?)

If you are generally in J class to start with then in my opinion is AAdvantage is hard to beat. The biggest drawback to MPC is that there are no tier bonus'. While they treat their Diamonds very well, they also treat OW elites like their own. As a sapphire, you will be able to use any J lounge regardless of class, and in my experience if you do check luggage it will be tagged with business class priority tags even if you are in economy (as an EXP mine get tagged with First priority tags without me ever asking). CX is one of the few carriers I fly where as christep mentioned priority baggage generally works. With your AA plat status, you will still get your 100% redeamable bonus in addition to any COS bonus. On MPC you only get your COS bonus.

Now the drawback of course is that if you want to catch a cheap economy flight somewhere, you cannot earn AA miles (some do not even earn Asiamiles). What I did was join Asiamiles and also get the CX Visa card. I have racked up a ton of Asiamiles this way mostly through purchases, but also the occasional cheapie weekend flight on CX or for use on Dragonair flights to China. Asiamiles also has dining promotions and other earning opportunities around town.

Asiamiles are good to have as they are generally worth more than AAdvantage miles. It is also a good back up program for OW as you can use them for upgrades on BA (in addition to updgrades on CX), and should you want to fly BA transatlantically, then you can credit to Asiamiles.

Flying lots of CX business sectors particularly if you fly back to the US a few times a year is also an easy way to earn EXP (remember you in theory would still need 4 AA sectors per year to maintain your AA status).

In short the only downside I see to staying with AAdvantage is the lack of additional award availability given to MPC elites and the guaranteed Y seat. (that said I have always cleared Y flights a have waitlisted on quickly)

Don't forget you can only upgrade on CX using Asiamiles... won't be able to with AAdvantage miles... Also, being in HK for a few years, you would probably get a HK based credit card, and pretty much the only points program woud be for Asiamiles or Amex rewards... So if you go for an Asiamies program, you would have miles already, so might as well get the status for it, since it is usually next to impossible to redeem CX tickets in J or F unless you have some sort of status with Marco Polo....

This is probably more true for long haul than short/regional. But good points also.

When I came I waited a little long to switch from BA to CX. In retrospect if I had been coming for a period that was definitely fixed at 2 years or less I would have stuck with BA. Anything longer and I reckon that, for all the reasons outlined here, switching to CX is the right move.

It also depends on the amount of travelling you are doing - for a few years I was (un)lucky enough to be able to maintain CX Diamond and AA EXP concurrently! Some Asia regional jobs have you on the road all the time.