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American Airlines has added the ability to book Cathay Pacific partner awards to AA.com. This is the third major addition to American's online search in the past few months. For most, this is great news; Cathay Pacific is an excellent partner airline for travel to Asia, and you can now use your AAdvantage miles to confirm a ticket without a phone call. On the other hand, American has one of the largest airline loyalty programs in the world, so for those who have been quietly booking these tickets through an AA call center for years, there will now be a lot more competition for these awards.
How it Works
To book a Cathay flight, just head to American Airlines' award search page. As we were testing this out, we noticed that some searches didn't yield results on dates where flights were available, so there still may be some bugs to work out.
Why this Matters
One of the most powerful benefits of airline miles is the ability to book flights on dozens of partner airlines. But it would have been easy to miss this huge opportunity if you had taken American's website at face value—until recently, the AA award search lagged far behind other airlines with respect to showing partner availability.
Now 19 of the 22 partners can be booked online, eliminating the need to make a time-consuming phone call to book travel. The partners that still require a phone booking are China Southern, LATAM, and Interjet.
Best Cathay Pacific Awards with AA Miles
Cathay is an all-around great airline, but it is among the best in the world for business- and first-class travel. Although you can book Cathay flights with miles from other Oneworld loyalty programs, American's award pricing has some significant advantages. British Airways, Iberia, Qantas, and Cathay's own loyalty program base their pricing on the distance you travel, so flights with multiple stops can get expensive quickly. American, on the other hand, uses a region-based award chart with a fixed price for travel from one part of the world to another. This means American's mile requirements can be drastically different from other programs—and often much better for business and first class.
For example, you can pick up flights from the Middle East to Asia Regions 1 and 2 for 50,000 miles one way in first class. That means for a trip from Dubai to Tokyo with a stop in Hong Kong in Cathay's legendary first class would only require 50,000 miles. Try that ticket with British Airways Executive Club and they'll want a laughable 126,500 miles for the exact same trip.
Our Take
It is always welcome news when an airline adds the ability to book awards with another partner online. AA's call centers are chronically understaffed, so this makes one of the most desirable partners far easier to book. (Is it really an “unexpectedly high call volume” if it happens every day?). If you have well-diversified points and miles, it's always a good idea to compare prices with other Cathay partners; there are plenty of cases where American isn't the winner on price.
For especially hard-to-find Cathay awards, it's worth noting that Cathay's own loyalty program (Asia Miles) allows members to book a full 360 days in advance, which gives them almost a month head start on American AAdvantage members (331 days). American also charges a close-in-booking fee of $75 for departures in less than 21 days. You can avoid this charge by booking Cathay through any of the other Oneworld programs including British Airways, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific.
Are you excited about Cathay awards on AA.com? Let us know in the comments.
Source: One Mile At A Time
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Excellent news, of course!
LATAM will leave Oneworld’s airline alliance on October 1, 2020, and is expected to enter new partnership with Delta, opening the possibility to join SkyTeam.
Excellent news !!, now, if I still want to make the phone reservation, will I be billed for the cost for having done it that way? Because the reservations I have made with LATAM, I always found them very fast and effective, and they treated me very well. What a difference in miles between AA and British …
That is great news, I travel frequently with AA and Cathay will offer some good options in the future.
This is great timing! I need to use some AA points and Cathay (for now) has a great flight from YVR to JFK.
Finally! You’d have thought HKG availability has gone up a bit recently!
Great news! No more wasting time on calls.
Which 3 still can’t be booked online?
China Southern, LATAM, and Interjet. I’ve updated the post to clarify.
That’s great news! I usually book Cathay Flights via Alaska but their partnership is somewhat limited as Cathay is part of a OneWorld Alliance.
Finally I will have a chance to redeem my AA miles.
Hmmmmm…mixed feelings. Hated the phone calls but the online booking will certainly mean more users booking these CX awards
As others have remarked, this development has an upside and a downside.
Hopefully more upside than downside !
Great! An easier way to redeem those Aadvantage miles!
Very good news. Cathay is my favorite carrier to HK and Beijing. I have a bunch of AA miles. Next flight, I am going to try to find an award ticket on the AA site. Thanks for letting us know about this…
Nice progress. Makes AA miles a lot more useful for flights to Asia
Thanks for the update and the potential use of miles. Been waiting to use my miles for Cathay.
Still not too much available seats in Cathay…that’s a reoccurring issue with them…
We have a bunch of AA miles and not enough domestic flights to plan. This will allow us to more easily plan an overseas trip and in an upgraded cabin perhaps 🙂
Is it possible to book complex routing that involves also EY?
HKG-BKK-SIN-AUH in F with 50000 points used to be my favorite routing. Now CX cuts all regional F products.
It should be possible as long as you don’t have a stop of more than 24 hours.
whohooo! this is great. I can go to asia on a whim, if i wanted to!!!
I got quite a few AA miles and have struggled to use them outside the US. Good to be able to use my AA miles a lot easier in Asia. It was just so tedious with the call center. Can’t believe it has taken them so long.
This should make booking a bit more convenient.
This is great news, I live in asia and Cathay are a great airline even though the Chinese are trying to control it
Very happy with this move
On the positive side, this should open up a bit of space on AA transpacific flights since some will use their AA miles to book with Cathay Pacific.
Yes, such changes aren’t made in a vacuum, so let’s hope this is indeed an outcome on the positive side of the ledger.
It’s great that Cathy Pacific along with other partner airlines can now be booked online but booking by phone isn’t very difficult either as long as you can determine award availability.
I think this has it advantages and disadvantages . advantages as its easier too book no need to wait on phone so they can look it up book it for you and charge you a fee, disadvantages now its easier for Everyone to access so they can disappear quick
What are the three partners that can’t be booked online?
China Southern, LATAM, and Interjet
Excellent news. I for one prefer not be calling around when checking for availability. Hopefully availability is ok from Europe.
This is great news without having to call AA?
this is great news – an additional way to use the miles I’ve been accumulating. Thank you for sharing this information.
19 of the 22 ain’t bad
Isn’t this mainly good news all around? Sure, short term availability might suffer somewhat, but increased ease of booking should make it easier to grab tickets once they’re available, no?
This is great news. Like that you can book cathay awards online.
AA getting a little progress. Better would be following United latest progresses.
I am one of the people who are not happy with this.
Now the competition to get CX’s premium cabin award seats will be even more challenging, and it is already very difficult to score award seats on CX.
I really wish AA didn’t do this…
I prefer booking CX awards through Alaska. Cheaper rates than AA.
And the booking of the Cathay flight award via Alaska is by phone or online?
That’s great but still waiting for Lantam
Not looking good on that front. LATAM just defected to Delta and is leaving Oneworld 🙁
Good news in my opinion. I doubt there were many people that solely relied on online search results when trying to book an award ticket, so I suspect this won’t result in much less availability, but it will make things less time-consuming. Thanks, AA and AwardWallet.
For number 2, AA doesn’t allow stopovers of more than 24 hours without charging for a separate award on the subsequent flight. I’d look at Cathay Pacific Asia miles for a round trip with a stopover, or British Airways or Alaska points to book a stopover (more than 24 hrs) on a one-way ticket for the best value. All three programs (CX, BA, AS) can book Cathay flights.
For ? #2, I’d recommend checking Emirates visa requirement tool. THere are a few factors that go into this.
I look forward to trying this for my future travels. Asia is a region that I haven’t explored. This might be a great use of my AA mikes.
If you can be flexible with dates this can be bigly beneficial. AA is starting to make it’s points/awards program look really attractive
I don’t think that will happen anytime soon.
It is convenient that Cathay can be booked online now, though.
Cathay’s own rewards program allows for people to book almost a year in advance. This is an advantage over the lesser time limit with American.
Absolutely. Qantas is also 360 in advance, although they’re known to block biz and first for non-elites.
I know there are plenty of things we can still nitpick about AA and this, but in general this is simply a good thing. Thanks.
Glad to see AA is finally doing this.
Thanks for good news . Waiting for LATAM become on line bookable with AA miles .
I doubt this will happen with LATAM expected to leave oneworld.
Cathay has not been releasing much space lately, I’ve been finding.
Excited at least to have another partner on the web page working for redemptions. I haven’t redeemed anything ever on them, so I don’t know just excited that I can now book them online besides yeay not having to call in. I admit that calling in was one of the issues. I don’t have any need at the moment to go to Asia.
Qantas is the most desirable right now that they book online, plus some others. It’s great to know the partners that I can book online. I wonder how long it’ll take AA to work out any issues with Cathay.
Very good news having even more partners that can be booked online.
Of course the small disadvantage is that there is more competition for something that before was not known by everybody.
where are the best places to go on Cathay Pacific??
They are Japan, North America, LHR and Australia.
This is of limited use because there appears to be lots of phantom space on AA with these flights. Also, Hong Kong is a mess right now. Not in my travel plans.
The flexibility here is what is most attractive. You get more out of your miles when you can take advantage of partnerships like this. Just make sure you have more than 6 months on your passport before it expires before travelling to China.
AA gets a little better, thx!
While being more easily bookable could potentially mean more competition for available award seats than before, overall I’d say this is s positive development, as long as AA isn’t just showing phantom availability like it does so often with QR.
Pros and cons of this move.
It was rumored months ago, and now the feature has been finally online! AA is the last big three that still offers the attractive region-based fixed-mileage awards!
This is certainly good progress, QR and Cathay are both bookable now thru the AA website.
It was fun while it lasted being able to book over the phone.