How to Book a Cathay Asia Miles Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award

How to Book a Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Round-the-World Award
Fly around the world (or not) with an Asia Miles Oneworld multi-carrier award. Photo: Cathay Pacific.

You may be aware that you can fly around the world in Business class for 318,000 Qantas points using the Qantas Oneworld Classic Flight Reward. But did you know that Cathay Pacific offers a very similar Oneworld multi-carrier award for just 265,000 Asia Miles in Business Class? That’s a saving of 53,000 points per passenger for itineraries of up to 35,000 miles flown!

The Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award offered by Cathay’s Asia Miles program is a special type of multi-city award. It allows you to travel up to 50,000 miles on Oneworld airlines, with up to 5 stopovers included. That’s enough miles to easily fly around the world… although this is not a requirement.

Cathay Oneworld Multi-carrier Award routing rules

Many routings are possible with the Asia Miles Oneworld multi-carrier award. Many people use it to book a round-the-world ticket, which represents excellent value for your Asia Miles! But you could also just book a simpler multi-city ticket that doesn’t circumnavigate the globe.

You’ll just need to ensure your itinerary follows these rules:

  • Up to 5 stopovers/transits (of any length)
  • Up to 2 additional “transits” (of under 24 hours)
  • Up to 8 flight sectors allowed in total
  • Up to 2 “surface segments” are also permitted
  • You may only pass through any given airport up to two times
  • Travel may only be completed on Oneworld airlines
  • You may travel on either:
    • Two Oneworld airlines other than Cathay Pacific, or
    • Three or more Oneworld airlines if one of the included carriers is Cathay Pacific
Cathay Pacific Airbus A350-1000.
Where Cathay Pacific is used, your Oneworld multi-carrier award must include flights on at least two other Oneworld airlines. Photo: Cathay Pacific.

You can read the full list of award routing rules on the Cathay Pacific website.

The following Oneworld Airlines can be used as part of an Asia Miles round-the-world award:

Oneworld airlines as of June 2022
Oneworld member airlines.

Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award pricing

The price of Cathay Pacific’s Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award depends on the class of travel and distance flown, excluding surface segments. Taxes and fuel surcharges, which vary depending on the routing and airlines used, are also payable in addition to the miles.

Here is the award chart from the Asia Miles website:

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Oneworld multi-carrier award chart as of 2023
Cathay’s Oneworld multi-carrier award chart as of 1 October 2023.

Please note that Cathay increased its Oneworld multi-carrier award prices on 1 October 2023.

Because this award allows you to fly quite a large distance, while limiting you to a maximum of only 8 flight sectors, you’ll get great value by booking lots of long-haul flights in Business or First Class (i.e. not wasting your sector allowance on short flights).

Sample Oneworld Multi-Carrier Award itineraries

Here’s an example of a routing for a Zone 11 award that would cost 126,000 Asia Miles in Economy or 250,000 Asia Miles in Business Class:

Sample itinerary 1
Sample itinerary 1: Round-the-world trip originating in Brisbane with stopovers in Tokyo, Moscow, London, New York & Los Angeles (23,776 miles flown)

This Zone 12 itinerary would cost 140,000 Asia Miles in Economy, 265,000 Asia Miles in Business or 365,000 Asia Miles for First class:

Sample Asia Miles itinerary via Auckland, Hong Kong, London, Barcelona, Doha, Johannesburg and Sydney
Sample itinerary 2: A multi-city trip originating in Sydney with stopovers in Auckland, London, Barcelona, Doha and Johannesburg. There is also an additional transit in Hong Kong (27,493 miles flown).

How to book

It is possible to book some simple Oneworld Multi-Carrier Awards on the Cathay Pacific website. Log into your Asia Miles account and select “Redeem flights” from the home page:

Cathay Pacific website screenshot
Log into your Asia Miles account and select “Redeem flights” on the Cathay Pacific website to book an Asia Miles award.

Then, select “Multi-city/stopover” to search for a multi-city itinerary:

Select "Multi-city/stopover" to book a multi-city Asia Miles award online with up to four cities included
Select “Multi-city/stopover” to book a multi-city Asia Miles award online with up to four cities included.

You could alternatively use the Asia Miles website to book some award tickets.

However, the Cathay Pacific and Asia Miles websites do not display award availability on American Airlines or Iberia. There is also a major limitation with the multi-city search function on the Cathay Pacific website where you’ll get an error message if your itinerary contains more than 4 cities.

Even if you are able to get past the search page, you’ll sometimes get an error message later in the booking process anyway. Therefore, for more complex itineraries, you’ll probably need to call up.

If you’re unable to complete the booking on the Asia Miles or Cathay Pacific websites, we recommend phoning Asia Miles. The number to call from within Australia is 1800 129 264.

We don’t recommend filling out the online form on the Asia Miles website to request award seats as it could take some time before an operator calls you back to complete the booking. By this time, some of your preferred award seats might not be available any more!

Before calling to book, check for Oneworld award flight availability on the routes you wish to book. You can use the Asia Miles website to check for award seats on most Oneworld airlines. Alternatively, you might find it easier to use the Japan Airlines, American Airlines, Qantas or British Airways websites to search for award availability.

Transferring credit card points to Asia Miles

Even if you don’t have an Asia Miles account (or any miles in your existing account), you might have points with an Australian credit card rewards program that you can transfer to Asia Miles!

You can transfer points from the following Australian credit card loyalty programs to Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, then redeem your Asia Miles to book an award ticket:

  • American Express Membership Rewards (2:1 conversion rate)
  • ANZ Rewards (3:1 conversion rate)
  • NAB Rewards (3:1 conversion rate)
  • Westpac Altitude Rewards (3:1 conversion rate)
  • CommBank Awards (3:1 conversion rate)
  • Diners Club Rewards (2:1 conversion rate)
  • HSBC Rewards Plus (2:1 conversion rate)
  • Citi Rewards (Prestige cardholders – 2.5:1 conversion rate)

Read more: The Ultimate Australian Credit Card Points Transfer Matrix

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Would you like help with an Asia Miles round-the-world award booking?

If you’d like to book a round-the-world award using Asia Miles but don’t know where to start, the Frequent Flyer Concierge service can help!

The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of redeeming your points. Just let them know how many points you have and where you’d like to go, and they can find the perfect flights for you! You’ll receive an easy-to-read report which includes clear, detailed booking instructions.

If you have a question about the Asia Miles Oneworld Multi-carrier Award, you can also post it on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
________________________

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Community Comments

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Unfortunately my CX account has 0 miles in it which makes it difficult to see availability and to test it out.

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Has anyone here ever booked one of these?

I imagine that the Business class award would be a pretty attractive option if you had a credit card that could transfer to Asia Miles.

Thats actually an excellent reward redemption especially considering the taxes tacked onto just about every QF redemption. Generally speaking cards that push to Asia Miles dont generally tend to have the most attractive transfer rates though:

  • Westpac Altitude - 2A:1AM
  • AMEX Rewards - 1MR:1AM

Other than an RTW, do they have any other sweet spots on their award charts? Seems like its better to push all OW points straight to AA or if QF, potentially Alaska due to their awesome CX J and F charges from AUS to USA.

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Can you start and end ex-AU or only ex-HKG?

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Thats actually an excellent reward redemption especially considering the taxes tacked onto just about every QF redemption. Generally speaking cards that push to Asia Miles dont generally tend to have the most attractive transfer rates though:

  • Westpac Altitude - 2A:1AM
  • AMEX Rewards - 1MR:1AM

Other than an RTW, do they have any other sweet spots on their award charts? Seems like its better to push all OW points straight to AA or if QF, potentially Alaska due to their awesome CX J and F charges from AUS to USA.

Yes, there are some other sweet spots with CX. One of my favourites is QF Premium economy and Business class flights just under 7,500 miles in length. The cost is 72,000 miles return in Premium economy or 120,000 miles return in Business. (First class 180,000 miles return.) Flights from Sydney to Santiago, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dubai all fall into this category. As do MEL-DXB and BNE-LAX.

https://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redeem/charts

Can you start and end ex-AU or only ex-HKG?

I don't see any reason that you would need to start in Hong Kong. In fact, there is no requirement to even set foot on a CX aircraft.

Reply 1 Like

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Just wondering if there is “How to book an Asia Miles One World MultI-Carrier Award“?
I’ve searched CX forum and can’t find a ”how to” guide.

Do all flights have to be available or are you able to add flights at a later stage eg QF.
These awards seem to be great value and I’m sure there are some sweet spot.

Thanks in advance.

Reply Like

There is an old thread about this award, but that was more somebody asking questions about their specific itinerary than a general "how to" thread.

There is also some info about this award here: How to Book a Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Round-the-World Award

To answer your question, you are only allowed to change the date or flight number after booking (which you can do by calling Asia Miles and paying a small fee). Airline and routing changes are not permitted. So, you can't add sectors later like you can with Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Reply 1 Like

click to expand...

There is an old thread about this award, but that was more somebody asking questions about their specific itinerary than a general "how to" thread.

There is also some info about this award here: How to Book a Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Round-the-World Award

To answer your question, you are only allowed to change the date or flight number after booking (which you can do by calling Asia Miles and paying a small fee). Airline and routing changes are not permitted. So, you can't add sectors later like you can with Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Ok Thanks. I’ll check it out.

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I would not recommend using Asia Miles if it needs to be done over the phone. Due to cost cutting, they have unofficially shut down a few call centres and last time when I tried to reach them over the phone via a number of different numbers, the call didn’t even get connected because the phone numbers published on their websites are not even valid...I did some research online and found this was a common issue even for users in USA...

I did reach out to them via social media and they didn’t answer my question as to why the numbers published on their website was invalid and instead referring me to online services ...

Reply Like

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I would not recommend using Asia Miles if it needs to be done over the phone. Due to cost cutting, they have unofficially shut down a few call centres and last time when I tried to reach them over the phone via a number of different numbers, the call didn’t even get connected because the phone numbers published on their websites are not even valid...I did some research online and found this was a common issue even for users in USA...

I did reach out to them via social media and they didn’t answer my question as to why the numbers published on their website was invalid and instead referring me to online services ...

Wow. OK thanks for that. I’ll try a mini online award then.

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Has anyone booked one of these awards recently?

It appears that it is now possible to book these online (either using the Asia Miles or Cathay websites), however you get an error message if your multi-city award includes more than four cities. So you would still need to call for more complicated itineraries. The website also doesn't show any AA availability, but does for Oneworld airlines other than American Airlines.

The Asia Miles oneworld multi-carrier award still seems to be excellent value, although the limit of 8 flights (max 5 stopovers + 2 additional transits) could be... well, limiting. At least you can get 2 additional open jaws, which don't seem to count towards the stopover limit.

Having another read of the rules, I'm also a little confused by this wording:

  1. A oneworld Multi-carrier Award is applicable for:
    1. two oneworld alliance airlines, when Cathay Pacific is not one of your selected carriers; or
    2. three or more oneworld alliance airlines, when Cathay Pacific is one of your selected carriers.

I assume it is possible in practice to book a Oneworld multi-carrier Award using more than two oneworld airlines when CX is not used. This is the case with the other equivalent Oneworld awards on other airlines, and in practice the CX website will even price an itinerary that uses 3 or 4 Oneworld airlines (none being Cathay) at the Oneworld multi-carrier award level. But that's not what the rule actually says.

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