Cathay award: BA and AA
 

Looking to book a family trip to somewhere in East Asia (preferably BKK, NRT/HND, maybe SIN). From JFK to any of the 3 destinations listed before I got 110K BA miles and 13K AA (with 75K coming in) so technically 88K. I'm thinking two tix on each airline, 100K from British and 130K from AA (IK, i'll do another bonus :D). During spring break, April 2012. Any ideas?

may want to try and deposit $100k in fidelity using AA's offer to get you another 50k miles on AA.

I am traveling on CX and had to redeem one ticket on BA and one on AA for the same flight. I would recommend reserving the first ticket with AA first, then calling BA to book the second. BA won't let you hold tickets, so sometimes it is a bit challenging to coordinate. Also, BA and AA don't always have the same availability.

I recently booked a trip on CX for Feb 2012 using both AA and BA miles

1) JFK -> HKG (multi day stopover) -> BKK, using BA miles
2) HKT (Phuket, I'm flying one way BKK - HKT on a separate ticket) -> HKG -> JFK -> DCA, using AA miles

Some recommendations and conisderations:

1) Consider booking one way, not roundtrip tickets on BA, since if you book a RT, the entire itineary cannot be changed or cancelled once it is less than 24 hours before the first flight
2) If you want to vist two destinations, you can include a stopover for free when you use BA miles (see comments above) but you cannnot have a stopover in Asia if using AA miles
3) BA mileage requirements for the "one partner" award are only 25K one way (for economy) to any of the destinations you are considering, while AA awards are 35K one way to most of Asia, except NRT which has a reduced mileage (25K mi) off peak award from October to April
4) BA will charge you for the fuel surcharge (YQ) on the ticket while AA won't

Hope this helps!

Your tips for using AA vs. BA miles for a CX award are super helpful - I'm considering doing a similar CX trip to the OP's and I have a choice of using either AA or BA miles. Thanks!

One question: did you have any trouble with AA agents seeing CX availability? Or did you get everything booked on the first try? Also, which class did you book? Thanks again!

This would also help me with a similar trip I'm planning. Would like to go to Bangkok, then to Vietnam and then stop in Hong Kong for a few days on the way home to Chicago.

Does BA allow one way awards?

Could i do the following:
Use 67.5K AA miles....ORD to BKK on Cathay Pacific 1st class (after Sept 1st) f

Use 75K BA miles on Cathay Pacific 1st class.....SGN to HKG..stop over for several days..... HKG to ORD

Would buy a ticket from BKK to SGN

Will this work?
Thanks

I did not have any trouble getting AA agents to find the same flights I had found on my own searches, but you raised a good point. Given that I'm new pretty new to this and didn't use paid services (e.g., Exper Flyer) checking CX availability was pretty time consuming and challenging. I started trying to gage BA/AA award availability based on AsiaMiles FF availability, but that was turning up seats that apparently only were available to people using CX (AsiaMiles) awards. Ultimately, I ended up using a combination of the BA and Qantas websites to search for award flights. BA searches only worked for me on segments where BA did not operate its own flights, and QF did not work for all segments either. Between the two though, I was able to find flights that both BA and AA agents could book for me.

I booked economy on the trip from the US, and business on the trip home.

Yes. BA offers One-Way award. In fact it is advisable to book One-Way award on BA because its very restrictive date change rule. See the post just 2 posts above yours.

Your routing would work, just keep in mind intra-Asia may not have F cabin or even if you book F on a 3-class flight, CX often swap aircrafts in its regional flights and you may wound up still in business. Short flights so it really does not matter whether sitting in F or J.

Kind of in a similar situation. Planning a trip to BKK this January.

I can spend either 130k points for 2 tickets in CX F to BKK via HKG, or right now transfer 100k points through Membership Rewards to BAEC (taking advantage of the transfer bonus) and book the same route except have the option of stopping over. I am not sure if we will want to stop over or not but I guess it would be nice to have the option. However this would also mean we need to get to the CX gateway ourselves. I suppose a drive up to LAX from SAN might not be too bad, though CX F from LAX doesn't seem too open to awards.

General AA question
 

Does AA allow to mix partners? Like can I fly DCA to JFK on AA and then to HKG on CX and then CX to BOM?

- naroowal

Listed below are my personal observations:

AA benefits:
Low to non existent (fuel) surcharges. I've booked one way trans pacific flights for $22.50, $20.00 of it being an agent booking fee.

Allows for multiple carriers with the same miles. I've done a mix of JAL/CX with domestic airlines.

Lower point requirement for first class flight. 135,000 vs. 150,000 using BA miles.

BA benefits:
Bookable online, hence no agent booking fee.

Lower point requirement for economy class (50,000 vs. 75,000) and business class redemption(s) (100,000 vs. 110,000).

Lower cancellation fee, $50 vs. >$100 on AA.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

AA will let you use more than one carrier on an All-Partner award, but AA will not let you fly from North America to India via Asia, so you cannot use CX on such a redemption.

I am flying SFO-HKG-SIN-CMB on CX with AA miles. It is interesting that Sri Lanka is a different zone (Asia 2) from India and Maldives - fortunately for me.

finding seat availability to BKK in April may be difficult due to the Songkran (Thai New Year) holidays.

Keep in mind that AA requires more miles for an award with a stopover of more than 24 hours. I believe for a economy tickets to Asia it would increase the mileage by an additional 15k miles. BA allows free stopovers.

Thanks! Yeah, I've got KVS (and have also learned my way around the QF/BA websites), so I'm sure I'll have to go through the same thing as you diligently looking for open space on the CX flights. Is it me or has the BA site gotten progressively worse over the last few months? It's constantly having "connection" issues when I'm searching for partner award space.