Asia Miles Award Charts & Routing Rules

Once again, I realized that there was no published Asia Miles partner award chart (which is different than the OneWorld Multi-Carrier Award Chart), and so I decided to make and quick publish the Asia Miles Partner Award Chart, alongside the Cathay and OneWorld Multi-Carrier.

Plus, I’ll briefly communicate routing/stopover rules for each award chart.

Asia Miles is a transfer partner of Amex MR, Citi TY points, and Cap 1 (at 1,000:750).

Asia Miles: Cathay and Dragon Flights Award Chart

• Pricing: Add up the distance flown to get price. Prices are oneway.
• When to use this chart: On Cathay Pacific and Dragon Air flights.
• Routing rules:
  • 1 stopover on oneways
  • 3 stopovers on roundtrips (including the destination)
    • Can trade stopover for open-jaw
  • Maximum of 1 connection each direction
  • Note: There are two rows for a distance of “5,001 – 7,500” miles. The second is used when your origin or destination includes a city in the Americas.

What is unique to Asia Miles about the Cathay and Partner award charts is that most distance based programs that add up the total distance flown do so at the end of the roundtrip. But for these award charts, you calculate the distance for each direction. Hence my describing prices as oneway.

Asia Miles: Partner Award Chart

• Pricing: Add up the distance flown to get price. Prices are oneway.
• When to use this chart: When flying on a single partner.
  • Which partners: Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air China, Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Bangkok Airways, British Airways, Finnair, Gulf Air, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Jet Airways, LATAM, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian Airlines, S7 Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, SriLankan Airlines, SWISS International Air Lines
• Routing rules:
  • 1 stopover on oneways
  • 3 stopovers on roundtrips (including the destination)
    • Can trade stopover for open-jaw
  • Maximum of 1 connection each direction
  • Note: There are two rows for a distance of “5,001 – 7,500” miles. The second is used when your origin or destination includes a city in the Americas.

Mixed Carrier Awards

As best I can tell, you are allowed to combine one partner and Cathay and use the above Partner Award Chart.

For example, if you flew AA to a hub, and then flew Cathay to Asia, you would still use this chart. If it was two different partners, you’d use the OneWorld Multi-Carrier Award Chart.

Asia Miles: OneWorld Multi-Carrier Award Chart

• Pricing: Add up the distance flown to get price.
• When to use this chart:
  • 1) When flying on two or more OneWorld partner airlines.
  • 2) When flying on three or more OneWorld airlines, including Cathay and Dragon.
• Rules:
  • Maximum of five stopovers (including the destination), plus two open-jaws are permitted.

What is unique about Asia Miles (or maybe Asian airlines in general) is that they include the destination as a stopover in a roundtrip. This essentially means that you can have 4 stopovers all together.

Assuming open-jaw are not additional connections, my understanding is that you can only have 3 connection each direction. Or possibly 6 connections all together.

I get this number from the T&Cs stating that you can have 5 stopovers plus 2 “transfers”, which I think are just connections. Therefore, 1 goes to the destination, and you’re left with 4 stopovers and 2 connections.

Conclusion

It seems that the best prices are when using Asia Miles on Cathay flights for a oneway.

However, if you’re flying roundtrip, you may or may not save miles on the oneworld award chart.

The other thing to consider is that you get more stopovers with the OneWorld award chart, and you get more stopovers on a roundtrip.