Kent Wang

I'm currently living in Shanghai though go back to Houston every year or so. I'm trying to see if I should save up my miles for the China-US flight (65k miles) or use it for travel within Asia.

Looking at the Interactive Reward Chart, North Asia to North Asia is 25k while North Asia to South Asia is oddly enough only 20k (South Asia to South Asia is also 25k).

But searching for flights from Shanghai to Hong Kong or Tokyo gives me "Continental or its partners serve these cities but do not publish schedules or fares between them. It may be possible to construct an itinerary using two separate fares by calling 1-800-231-0856." I haven't called the number yet but it seems doubtful.

Maybe CO just doesn't allow redemption for PVG (Shanghai)? Does anyone have any experience with redeeming miles for use within Asia?

ErnestTraveler

As far as I know, you won't be able to find any partner flights departing PVG to the rest of Asia via Continental.com. I don't know what exists in reality but international partner flights not involving a USA stop don't appear in the online searches. Make a phone call to Continental. When CO was partnered with NWA there were a fair share of HK/China/Japan/SE Asia flights for low miles. I am not sure what exists now.

ichiroll

For this reason alone, I use my OnePass miles for travel to/from the US. You can constantly check award availability via the site and can get a lot of feedback/help from this forum.

I think it's too much hassle to call up and have to "feel out" what the flight schedules are, let alone award availability.

sbm12

No need to call to determine schedules or availability. You just need a bit of education. :-:

Join the ANA FF program. Use the workarounds currently available to get past the requirement that you have miles in your account and search for all the *A program flights you want. It is significantly more useful than co.com, particularly for partners in Asia.

Once you've figured out the flights you want call in and feed them to the agent. I just booked an 8-segment, mostly F itinerary from NYC to AKL/SYD via Europe (and I have another on hold via ICN) with no trouble because I was able to feed them the flights that I knew were open. Piece of cake.

usa18dca

I do have to admit it's been tough getting awards out of KUL/SIN on SQ/NZ

pbd456

i just redeem 3 tickets from north asia to south asia for 20000 miles each in economy. it is of very GREAT value. basically, i found all segments and called in to book the tickets. very easy.

pbd456

i used a combination of TG and CA, but the downside is that i had to overnight in BKK on both directions.

LAX

I agree since most intra-Asia flights are expensive. You will get even more bang for your miles if redeeming for premium cabins.

LAX

pbd456

i dont have enough miles for 3 tickets in premium cabin. also, it was last minute, book on monday and fly on wednesday.
start in shenzhen to bali and on the way back. have a stopover in HK. before going to lahsa in jan 1. now, have to figure out how to come back to hk from xining.

eponymous_coward

I just got paid to fly SQ HKG-DPS (via SIN), and TG DPS-HKG (via BKK). All in business class.

Worked like this:

- took advantage of Key's $150 cashback on new checking, applied for CO Debit card (4,000 miles, cost $30)
- got the Chase CO debit card/checking account (25,000 miles, cost $25)
- signed up for emails and other bonuses to the account for the remaining 1,000 (cost: $0)
- redeemed miles (cost in taxes and fees: $37.36, plus 30,000 CO miles)

$150-30-25-37.36= $57.64 left over.

All told, not bad value- coming out with extra cash while flying business class in Asia. And the phone call was easy as pie- in fact, the CO rep was able to find space on a SQ flight the ANA tool didn't show as available, which cut a connection in SIN down from 5 hours to 2. Night and day difference from dealing with US for my pseudo-RTW award (involving calling back and finding CS reps who can actually do what US is supposed to be able to do on awards).

Kent Wang

Looks like things have changed a bit since then. North Asia to South Asia is now 30k, which makes more sense, but it seems much less of a good deal, especially when compared to North Asia to North America.

I can also find some flights through the CO website, but all of the ones to South Asia go through Bangkok, so I'm guessing that it only shows some but not all options.

The ANA website workarounds are no longer working for me.

sbm12

I'll take a look at the script but in the mean time just do a search for GMP-HND and then click the "Use Star Alliance Airlines" link at the bottom of that page and the ANA site should open up to you.