Wealth Blog | Are you getting all your Cathay Pacific Asia Miles?

Who checks and counts their Asia Miles when the statement comes in every month to see they have been credited with the right number of miles? I don’t, but I probably should.

Although increasingly difficult to claim – especially on popular long haul routes like Hong Kong to London – it’s always worth a try. Especially, if like many passengers, you buy a cheaper ticket and use the miles to upgrade to something more comfortable. 

Buying an economy ticket and using miles to upgrade to Business used to be a cost effective way to use miles. But I imagine that was too popular, or too many people were forking out for full fare Business tickets, because Cathay Pacific has recently slipped in a sneaky new rule – you can only upgrade one class using miles. So gone are the days of Economy to Business. Now they’ve introduced Premium Economy on many routes, you have to cough up the cash for one of those if you want to upgrade on miles to Business. But it’s still a good deal. 

Here by the way, are how the numbers stack up. Taking a sample date of December 4 outbound to London from Hong Kong, returning on December 14, you would pay HK$13,836 for an economy return ticket. For that you’d get 7,500 Asia miles. Premium Economy would cost you $20,149, but you’d get a generous 13, 372 Asia miles. That’s a big difference in miles.

A Business Class seat would cost $61,510 and you’d get a relatively measly 14,958 miles. If you use miles to upgrade from Premium Economy to Business it would cost you 30,000 Asia Miles. So by flying premium economy you rack up a free upgrade to Business quite quickly.

Missing miles