So I was thinking of transferring some American Express Miles into Asia Miles. At a minimum, I would think it would help Cathay because as I understand it Amex buys the miles from them, so it would give Cathay some cash.

I want to have Asia miles there, ready to use once we are able to get back to Hong Kong / China. (Assuming the USA ever gets itself together with COVID!).

Then I started thinking about potential risk. Not of devaluation... that risk is always there. It's more about Cathay stability. Is there much of a chance that Cathay could go bankrupt, and my miles vanish? I'm thinking there are too many stakeholders that would stop that from happening, but is that naive to think?

I would suppose the other risk is that Cathay decides to offer some incentive to transfer miles, and I'd miss out.

Thoughts?

Why not convert when you can actually fly?

Devaluation is the larger risk than CX going under in my view. CX is going to be supported just for maintaining the skeleton air network. It currently has no motivation to increase conversion rates as no-one can currently burn miles. I am far worried when pax can fly away, and I'm looking at 300,000 AM redemption return to Japan.

So I keep redeeming, cancelling and redeeming again all the way 12 months' out.

I would think with the new financing plan (Swire, CA, QR, and HKSAR government all injecting cash), CX is good for another 2 years at least?

Most likely CX will survive for at least that long

CX is not your friend, but a business. Why would you do that? Write them a big cheque if you truly want to help them.

It's not a "friend" thing. It's not a gift. I value their service. I know I'm going to use them once the quarantine restrictions are lifted in Hong Kong. I think transferring the points is like giving them an advance payment. Whether I do it now, or do it in a few months, I'm going to do it.

The intent is to help support them.

I was just looking for some opinions on their stability.

Maybe CX paid something forward to Gongzuokuang that he felt motivated to pay back.

I have AMTSL as a respondent before the TIC.

Agree the biggest risk being devaluation and redemption seat availability. CX is playing games big time these days. Even with planes empty during COVID, you can barely find a seat available for redemption. Basically their strategy is to force everyone to buy cash tickets. That might be their new strategy going forward, so doesn't matter how many miles you have, if there's no seats being made available.

The other thing. I think Amex buys miles way ahead of time at a fixed rate from CX. So when you do your transfer now, you're actually helping out Amex burn their stash of miles which they already purchased from CX in the past. So CX is not getting any additional cash from this probably, unless you transfer so much that Amex runs out of miles and needs to purchase more.

This is interesting to know. Is this something you found in a financial statement somewhere?

Are you extrapolating from this https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/0...million-avios/ ?

Then you don't need to do that now.

CX will survive forever, i.e. eternal, given the portion owned by CA, as well as HKSAR Government.

However, its staffs do not.