Moving to Hong Kong - Best awards program?
 

I'm moving from New York to Hong Kong in a few months for work and was looking for some advice on the best awards program for the travel i'm expecting to do. I'll likely be flying from HKG to New York and HKG to Australia a fair amount (probably once a month), as well as the occasional HKG to Tokyo. My company will pay for business class on most flights. I currently have OneWorld and Star Alliance accounts (AA and CO), but I let my CO elite status lapse so I'm starting from scratch in terms of EQMs.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Oneworld is the way to go from Hong Kong home airport of CX better lounges once you get to Emerald status, and direct flights to where you need to go ie Australia and New York.

Welcome to FT and the OW forum AdamC!

Either CX or AA program would be good for you. CX has more mileage earning opportunities in HK as AA doesn't even fly to HKG. For Y travelers only high booking classes on CX can earn miles on AA. But since you will be flying in J all the time, your tickets can earn AA miles it shouldn't be a problem for you. AA has a more generous mileage program than CX with elite bonuses (including CX and QF flights!) and lifetime program. You might as well continue to work on your lifetime miles on your AA account to achieve lifetime status.

Also CX doesn't give elite bonuses which is a huge :td: but they do have seat guarantee (well you don't care right you are traveling on company's dime :p) but they give very generous op-up to their own elites (partly thanks to their seat guarantee policy)

In case you decide to switch to CX, you can easily get a status match from them so you don't have to start from scratch.

Good luck moving to HK :)

If you have elite status on another airline, you could get a status match on CX. Being based out of HKG, it would be better to have status with a home airline - which in this case is CX. They treat their elites very well (i.e. ocassional greetings to thank you for your loyalty) and their rewards programme (Asia Miles) is more useful locally (i.e. many credit cards in Hong Kong that allow Asia Miles point exchange, miles for shopping at Hong Kong supermarkets, restaurants etc.) than AAdvantage.

Note that Asia Miles should not be confused with The Marco Polo Club.

Thanks for the help.

Although I only have 42k AA miles, I think I'll stick with the AA program. I'll only be in HK for 2-3 years then back to NY so I figure it's a better long-term plan. Should be AA Gold very quickly and I guess I'll go from there.

Quick update on my situation.

I ended up getting AA to match my CO Silver status (it was about to lapse) to AA Gold. Since Feb 15th I've flown about 60k BIS miles almost all in business class (full flight list below). I'm 15k short of AA executive platinum and will have it by the end of June. That being said, I find myself flying almost exclusively in full-fare business on CX. Anyone think it's worth trying to switch to the Marco Polo club? I'm just debating if there are any tangible benefits outside of the occasional upgrade to F (the HK to Australia flight are two class flights anyway).

Any thoughts or advice?

Thanks

Flights YTD, all business unless noted ...

JFK to HKG on CX
HKG to MEL on CX
MEL to PER on QF
PER to HKG on CX
HKG to SYD on CX
SYD to HKG on CX
HKG to HND on ANA (econ)
HND to HKG on JAL (econ)
HKG to SYD on CX
SYD to BNE on QF
BNE to SYD on QF
SYD to HKG on QF
HKG to SYD on CX
SYD to HKG on CX
HKG to JFK on CX

I would stick with AA. With AA, your miles doesn't have a hard 36 month expiration period as long as you have activity every 18 months. You'll get elite double bonus miles which you get with all oneworld airlines except for Malev, S7. So basically you would net at least an extra 100K RDM miles as an AA EXP. It's also easier to be AA EXP than CX DM - 100k miles vs 120K. Since you fly business anyways, it's actually only 66.7K miles for AA EXP since biz fares are 1.5 EQP.

As for occasional upgrades to F from J on CX, with 6 or 9 seats.. CX DM+ would be ahead of CX DM.. so it be unlikely.

-jr