Which program is best to get Cathay seats
 

I'm thinking of transferring my starwood pts to alaska, AA, or BA. Are either of these more successful to get sets on Cathay?

CX Asia Miles

Yes that would be ideal, but I can get 20,000 miles closer to an award by getting a credit card with one of the other airlines and it is 10-20K less miles to get a C award from USA to SE asia

You probably saw from other threads that getting a long-haul business class award is very difficult even on Asia Miles. Any other will be worse. Would you consider economy class award?

no, only business, I know it's difficult but it's not impossible. There's also the JAL option. So would there probably be not much difference if you're using Alaska or British?

The only advantage with Asiamiles is that you are allowed to waitlist on a flight that no longer has award space, whereas on any of the other programmes, you basically have to search till you find a flight with an award seat on.

do you think they probably give the same allocation to the other one world partners?

It is more on how partners (OW and non-OW) are allocating their awards. CX is just the operating airline.

In my experience, CX releases their awards generally across the board for all its partners. ie when CX sees it, so does everyone else. But once these seats are gone, they're gone. Thats only when having an asiamiles accounts helps as you can waitlist on the flights that no longer have any more award seats. Then asiamiles queues your PNR off to CX inventory control and when they feel like it, a seat (or 2) will be released to the PNR - not to general inventory control.

In this way, CX protects its own members by giving them priority access. Of course having elite status in the Marco Polo Club helps too as preference will be given to those with higher priority status.

That is not my experience or that of others in a different board; CX asiamiles members will see more availability than AAdvantage members, although we AA-people seem to see the same availability as BA-people. I was searching business class.

Trust me, its the same! That's why the waitlists come in for MPC/Asiamiles members as CX cannot restrict inventory of award seat availability to any of its partners.