Cathay’s Great Value Mixed-Cabin Awards to London

If you wanted to use your Qantas Frequent Flyer points to fly Business Class from Sydney to London, it would now cost you at least 166,300 Qantas Points, plus taxes & carrier charges. And that’s if you could even find any Classic Reward availability.

By comparison, Cathay charges 115,000 Asia Miles (plus taxes) to fly Cathay Pacific Business Class from Sydney to London via Hong Kong. There’s even pretty good award availability, with multiple Business Class award seats available on many dates for booking through Cathay Pacific’s own frequent flyer program.

And if you have access to Cathay Asia Miles, it gets even better. Although Cathay Pacific does not offer First Class between Australia and Hong Kong, it does on the onward leg from Hong Kong to London. This opens up a great opportunity for savvy points collectors…

Cathay Pacific offers great value mixed-cabin awards

If there’s Business Class award availability from Australia to Hong Kong, and First Class availability from Hong Kong to London, Cathay makes it fairly easy to book both sectors as a single mixed-cabin award. Plus, this can actually be really good value!

For example, if you wanted to book a Cathay award ticket flying Business Class from Perth to Hong Kong, then First Class from Hong Kong to London, this would cost 142,600 Asia Miles + HKD1,875 (~AU$371) one-way.

How Cathay calculates mixed-cabin award pricing

Although Cathay no longer publishes award charts, award pricing is generally consistent and based on the total distance flown. We’ve published some unofficial award charts which show how many Asia Miles you could expect to spend on a given award flight.

Flying Cathay Pacific, you would normally pay 115,000 Asia Miles for a Business Class redemption from Australia or New Zealand to Europe. In theory, a First Class redemption would cost 160,000 Asia Miles.

When you redeem for a combination of Business and First Class, Cathay will charge you an amount of miles between the Business and First Class amounts, based on the proportion of distance flown in each cabin. For example, if 40% of the journey is in Business and 60% is in First Class, you would pay an amount that’s 60% of the way between the Business and First Class amounts. This is actually a very fair system!

As a point of comparison, if booking separately, you would normally need 58,000 Asia Miles to fly from Australia to Hong Kong in Cathay Pacific Business. A standalone Hong Kong-London First Class award would cost 125,000 Asia Miles. So, by booking both flights together as a mixed-cabin award, you’re saving quite a few Asia Miles.

How to book a mixed-cabin award on the Cathay Pacific website

There’s no real “trick” to searching for mixed-cabin awards on the Cathay Pacific website. Simply search for an award flight in the lower of the two cabins, as you normally would:

If Business Class is not available on both sectors, but there is a mixed-cabin itinerary available using First Class on one of the flights, the Cathay Pacific website should offer it automatically as one of the options in the search results:

Don’t use the multi-city booking tool, and don’t search for First Class awards. The website won’t present the options you’re after.

Before you get to this step, you might find it helpful to search for award availability in the cabin you want on each individual sector first. For example, you might start by searching for Sydney-Hong Kong in Business and then Hong Kong-London in First. Once you find two flights that have availability and connect to each other, then search for Sydney-London in Business.

A mixed-cabin award pricing quirk

Ironically, because of the way Cathay prices mixed-cabin awards, your award might actually be cheaper if your connecting flight in Business Class is longer.

For example, it costs fewer Asia Miles to fly Christchurch-Hong Kong-London in Business/First compared to Sydney-Hong Kong-London or Perth-Hong Kong-London. That’s because the Business Class flight from New Zealand to Hong Kong is longer than from Australia to Hong Kong.

Earning Asia Miles in Australia

In Australia, you can transfer points from around half a dozen different credit card reward programs into the Cathay frequent flyer program. For example, Amex Membership Rewards points convert to Asia Miles at a 2:1 rate.

So, if you’re earning lots of points through credit card spend or sign-up bonuses, you could be off to London in Business and First Class in no time!