Hi Everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster. Was hoping to get some advice from the enlightened folks on this forum.

So I'm trying to redeem some miles to get a business class ticket on Cathay from JFK-HKG. Sounds simple enough, problem is I'm a Star Alliance guy, plenty of miles on United but nothing significant in OW.

I've got a lot of Amex membership rewards, Starpoints and Marriott reward points. So I'm trying to figure out my options:

1) Transfer points from AMEX MR to Iberia Plus and use it to book a ticket. This will cost me 154K MR points. Seems high.

2) Amex MR transfer to Aeroplan at 1:1 and then Aeroplan to AAdvantage through Points.com: I think the transfer fees from Aeroplan would bite me although in terms of points, it's 110K on AA assuming I can transfer from Aeroplan to AAdvantage at 1:1

3) BA: I have 20K odd miles in BA. Convert 125K marriott reward points into 50K BA miles + convert 25K starpoints into 25K BA miles (and starwood throws in 5K miles). In terms of miles BA only requires 100K to redeem on OW partners but it's a lot of hotel points to be using and I'm not sure if this is the most effective use of them.

Any ideas on what the best use of my points/miles is to redeem this? Should I be conserving points and focus on maybe buying some miles from the airline (in option 3 for example)?

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

Have you considered CO's EWR-HKG service? It won't be as luxurious as CX's, but you can book more or less directly using only 120K MR points, assuming you can find the availability you need. I wouldn't drop that many hotel points on the redemption; that seems high to me.

Thanks for the reply but maybe I'm missing something here. I thought that 125K MR points would only get you 50K onepass miles and so to redeem a BF ticket on CO, I'd have to transfer 310K MR points (for 120K onepass miles)?

No, CO allows 1:1 conversion from AMEX points. This can actually be done from the CO website itself. Go into "OnePass Frequent Flyer" > "Tranfer Points into Miles." Then click on Membership Rewards. It's great. As for your other option with points.com, that site seriously devalues miles; you'd get maybe 25% of the amount you converted. I wouldn't suggest it.

If it's oneworld you're looking at, then I think even QF has the same 1:1 deal with Membership Rewards. Best way to look into that is to actually call up their frequent flyer division. I'm not sure on the details, but I did get a round-trip economy fare JFK-MEL for about 80,000 MR points.

QF does NOT have a 1:1 relationship with AmEx MR. They have some rewards available, as does CX, but they are coach only and generally not great values.

If you do choose the CO route, make sure that the seats are available before transferring the points. You can set up the link between your accounts, which may take a couple days to get set up, and then search on the CO site. When you find the seats and go to pay for them you can actually initiate the transfer right there as a pull from CO, assuming you've previously set up the link. There was some discussion on the AmEx MR forum earlier in the week that the link might be broken right now, but it should generally work.

Not true. It does as per this link from the AMEX Australia website.

I think you might have to be based in Australia for it, unfortunately, or at least have an Aussie address so that you can create your frequent flyer account in Australia. I did get a JFK-MEL return flight on Qantas by simply transferring 80K MR points, but as a travel certificate. The rate is now 82500 points. But then again, that is only Qantas economy, not applicable to any other carrier, but still a good value. But sbm12 is right in that I don't think Qantas has a 1:1 transfer in the US.

If you're willing to wait, and still want oneworld, according to the AMEX MR website, you can transfer 1:1 points to Mexicana miles. Mexicana joins oneworld in 2009 sometime.

Based on the OP's location information (NYC) I had assumed a US-based card. That wouldn't allow the transfer to QF directly. Sorry for not being explicit about it. Actually, the Oz-based card can only transfer into MH, TG, VS, QF, SQ, CX and Virgin Blue. You cannot transfer those into CO or MX, among others.
Mexicana is already a QF partner.

Mexicana also is a CX partner, but a J reward to HKG is 260K Frecuenta points, which is pretty obscene. And that is still capacity restricted. For 300K you can have last seat availability on CO if you're elite (or a seat in the R bucket if you aren't).

Wow. I didn't even bother to check because I assumed there would be more "normal" numbers. Those have got to change when they become a member of oneworld. OTOH, if the OP is willing to go to Japan on JL and catch a connecting flight to HKG, US-Japan is 90K frecuenta (MX) miles in business class. 90K J ticket is well worth it. CX requires something like 135K miles for their J roundtrip JFK-HKG now, and I thought that was obscene. 260K is plain robbery.

But how many more points to get from NRT-HKG??? The 90K reward to Japan is a pretty good value, but that isn't all the way to where the OP wants to go.

Thanks to both of you. That's useful information. 90K to NRT sounds like a good deal but need to look into whether I can find a cheap ticket from NRT to HKG.

Unfortunately BF on CO is unavailable with a Saverpass award for the dates I want in March so have to keep looking.

Yeah ... unfortunately Mexicana's chart didn't specify that. I figured JFK-NRT could be J award, with cheap revenue connection to HKG. It's a 4 hour flight, so not awful in Y. Looks like the OP is considering it already. Glad to be of help. Mexicana will probably change their redemption rate when they join oneworld. Unless they give crazy mileage bonuses to their flyers, 260K miles for a J return trip just can't compete with mileage rates from other alliance members. You could fly in CX F for less than that.

The obvious deal is using BA miles, especially if you are flying coach (only 50k miles and 100k for biz) but they will charge you the fuel surcharges as well as ticket handling fees and other fees which seem higher than if you booked directly with CX. Award availability also seems better with BA miles than AA miles in my experience, but you can't hold award reservations and you can't change dates once travel has commenced.

If you decide on BA redeem a Marriott Travel Package, then 120K Marriott points net you 120K BA miles instead of only 50K.

Using Amex, forget CX, forget Biz class, and do an Aeroplan 120k redemption on NH, OZ, SQ, LH, or LX.

Send me a PM if you want details.