Help, REward flight to Shanghai on CX with, BA, AA and AS points.
 

I'm planning a trip with my wife and parents to Shanghai around Oct 2013. (yes, I;m planning way ahead). I know you can't book tickets yet, so this is just advanced planning. The questions is I have 120k with BA, 120k with AS and 250k with AA. I would like to fly in J. I know you can book CX with all of those, as I under stand it you can't do one way tickets. But can I do an open Jaw departure of JFK-PVG and return of PVG to SFO or LAX. Also can I do a 4 night stop over in HKG on the way there? Thanks in advance for any help and Advice.

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Rules regarding stopovers, open jaws, fuel surcharges, etc., will vary widely depending on whose miles you will be redeeming. AA and BA both permit one-way redemptions on CX, so there will be no issue about having an open jaw. BA charges for each flight segment flown, so you will pay separately for the JFK-HKG, and the HKG-PVG flight, regardless of whether you stop over or merely connect in HKG. AA will not permit a stopover in HKG on a JFK-PVG award.

There is no reason to worry over a 4-night stopover in HKG. Route like this: JFK-HKG O/W, PVG-JFK O/W. You have enough AA miles to book this in your preferred cabin, so I would start searching for availability.

The BA miles will come in handy for the HKG-PVG leg, which you can redeem for a O/W award at what I think will be a good rate.

Flying CX to PVG is a little annoying. I flew this route a lot of times last year, and almost always I wished I'd connected in Narita instead. You might want to look at schedules and availability for JL also because when you connect in HKG, you are flying over PVG and then coming back north. It's not a biggie, but it is a little bit annoying.

Both AA and BA are on one-way system. A R/T essentially is 2 x One-Ways. AA does not allow Stopover en route. BA essentially is charged by both distance and segment, so technically you can book 1 ticket for each segment needed, essentially give you a stopover at HKG.

One-way on AA is 55K each so you barely have enough miles for 4 one-way Js using your AA miles.

BA is not zone based program since Nov 2011. It is now a distance + segment based program. There is no way to know how much you need until you give a specific itinerary. The cost varies GREATLY based on how you fly, not to mention the $300 or more fuel surcharge on EACH ticket.

AS is a round trip program for partner award and it is 120K to Asia on CX per award. It allows a stopover en route. This is the only program that allows you to have a stopover at HKG.

In other words with your current stash, you would need to split your booking across all 3 programs, and no stopover other than the ticket booked with AS miles.

One person goes on AS, other persons go on AA one-way and BA one-way but you dont have enough BA Avios even not thinking about the fuel surcharge.

You may not even have enough BA Avios for 2 one-way tickets to PVG if you are from East Coast or you need a connection to go to CX gateway. Besides, since CX has to connect at HKG from JFK in order to get to PVG, BA award would be JFK-HKG one price, then add HKG-PVG another price, to get to a total Avios needed.

PS
Somehow I vaguely recall someone has asked very similar questions before.

Read more carefully - OP has 4 tickets to book - him, his wife, his parents. He needs 440K to book 4 tickets in J for the whole trip. He only has 250K So he is way short from what he needs to travel in his preferred cabin unless he put his parents in coach and book their tickets using his AS miles...

Good point. The YQ may be $45 or so. I know BA charges HKG-TPE, HKG-SIN, HKG-KUL and HKG-BKK all are $44xx YQ for some reason. So I guess China-HKG may be the same.

By the same token, it may cost OP less Avios to fly JFK-NRT-PVG then JFK-HKG-PVG since BA is distance-based. Though the YQ on JL would be quite a bit higher than on CX.

Greetings from Shanghai, ducktape. Since I also hold miles in all 3 of the programs you mentioned (in addition to BMI), which I use to travel between the US and China on a regular basis, I'm able to offer a bit of insight.

I suggest that you use your AA miles on the outbound from New York because BA is now prohibitively expensive on that route. JFK-NRT-PVG would be my routing of choice, and I'd choose F over C in a heartbeat (67.5k miles v. 55k miles). And, use BA miles for the return. This is a little tricky. Basically, HKG-SFO and PVG-LAX still price out at the 50k level, but anything more exotic (even HKG-LAX) is a raw deal. Since I strongly prefer CX to AA, I'd try to get to HKG on my own, and redeem HKG-SFO.

Slightly OT: I have been having a hard time to find CX TPAC award flight availability on BA.com. The system always comes up with TATL routing on BA metal. Any tips on how to work the system to "cough up" those CX seats?