If you’re going to book something hoping it gets cancelled I would suggest booking Washington Dulles. It’s the most oddball route in the US with little feed from AA. Seattle would be my second choice followed by Newark.

Sorry, asked in the other thread but also saw this thread just now.

I only have ~30k AM balance right now, of which ~10k will be expiring end of the month.
Not a great lot, but still don't want to waste it to useless AM gadgets.

And in my case, not quite worth $120 usd/12k AM refund either. What are some short haul things that would be ideal to book on and hope CX is the one that cancel them?

Short haul AA flights within the US use 10k Asia Miles. Maybe a quick weekend trip this coming Spring to a city you’ve never visited?

I don't live in 'Merica.

Thinking of just booking it on a TPE or BKK flight.

I would recommend HKG-TPE-KIX/NGO flights (CX564/CX530), as currently CX only flies to NRT in Japan, and even if flights to KIX/NGO are to resume, it's unlikely that stopover flights like 564 and 530 would be CX's priority.
I've booked December CX530 (HKG-NGO) back in July and it got cancelled last month.
But you better book flights for Jan-Mar though as there are rumours that Japan will reopen to tourists in Apr 2021.

Here is an additional data point: back in Apr 2020, my friend redeemed a TSA-HND//NRT-TPE air ticket for travel in Nov 2020 on JL. These 55,000 points would otherwise have expired on 31 May 2020.

Just got a call from Marco Polo, and both flights got cancelled, but my friend was protected on alternate JL flights (same day). We took this opportunity to cancel the trip (as we were planning to anyway, since Japan is not yet opening to visitors). Miles will be reposted to my friend's account, and the new expiry date would be 31 Jul 2021.

If you waited till Jan 1 to cancel, what would the expiry be?
And when you take advantage of this "opportunity", do you have to do it before they protect you to an alternative flight?

Sorry, can't answer either of your questions. We already cancelled the Nov 2020 flight; did not want to (nor believe that we could) wait until Jan to cancel. And, the reason we got the call was that MPC wanted to know if my friend would accept the protection on the alternate flights on JL; so we were already protected when we decided to cancel.

This doesn't make sense. If the original expiry date is 31MAY2020, the new expiry date should be 31MAY2021. If the new expiry date is 31JUL2021, the original expiry date should be 31JUL2020.

I know it does not make sense, but I am not complaining. :)

However, the miles have not yet actually reappeared in the account, so let’s wait and see.


EDIT and UPDATE:

The points have JUST appeared back in the account. It turns out neither the agent nor me were correct. :) I thought that my friend’s 55,000 miles were ALL EXPIRING on 31 May 2020. It turns out that only SOME of them were expiring. So, when the 55,000 reposted into the account, about 28,000 had 31 Mar 2021 expiry, and the remaining were split into Mar 2022 and Mar 2023 expiry.

So, the question now is, for miles originally expiring on 31 May 2020, why did they get redeposited, but with only a 31 Mar 2021 expiry? (But it looks like we are going to rebook by Mar next year for a planned trip in Nov, so we should be ok with this expiry anyway,)

Redeposited miles past original expiry expire in the next anniversary. That's normal.

Speaking of burning miles, does anyone know why TPE-HKG flights are all waitlisted through most of early Nov? I'm trying to catch a flight back to HK and, with 49K expiring in Dec, I'm hoping to burn them on the return. Also, would be grateful if anyone knew if selecting "choice" or "tailored" increase the changes of coming off the waitlist (or is the waitlist largely artificial, and if I book standard, I still have a good chance of getting seats back?)

If that doesn't work, I may just end up getting HK airlines one-way back and then booking for a HKG-TPE-KIX for early Jan (J RT = 50K! perfect...)

Would anyone have any ideas on how to deal with expiring Asia Miles for those who are based in Australia? Not sure when the travel ban is going to be lifted. Not desperate to travel, but have miles which are expiring soon...

I guess you can redeem items from the asiamiles shop...

I like the idea as it means we won't have to shell out for taxes & other charges :)