Cathay Pacific Visa for Canadians

by Gary Leff

Canadians can get a Cathay Pacific Visa Platinum card from RBC Bank.

The annual fee is stiff at CA$150, but the card earns 1 AsiaMile per Canadian dollar spent — pretty good earning — on top of the 5000 AsiaMiles with first purchase.

The AsiaMiles program permits upgrading on British Airways and American in addition to Cathay Pacific, and some of its awards are incredible values. 60,000 AsiaMiles buys you a business class award of less than 5000 miles each way. That would yield a British Airways ticket from the U.S. East Coast to most destinations in Europe. American charges 50,000 miles in coach for that.

AsiaMiles is my program of choice for transferring eBay Anything Points, by the way, since 1 eBay point yields slightly more than 1 AsiaMile.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. I think I read somewhere, one of the best ways to earn AsiaMiles is to earn them through ebay credit card. No annual fee.

  2. True, you need to do the math but this card will earn 1 AsiaMile per CANADIAN dollar spent rather than just over 1 AsiaMile per US dollar spent (a la the eBay card).

    So this card seems a good solution for Canadians, while the eBay card is a reasonable solution for Americans.

    That said, you can also earn AsiaMiles via the Starwood Amex — and if you transfer 20k points at a time to Cathay Pacific you wind up with 25k AsiaMiles, or an earning rate of 1.25 miles per dollar.

  3. wait, so cant i just buy 60k ebay points for $600, transfer to cx, and have a business ticket from jfk-lhr?

  4. I don’t believe you can just buy anything points from eBay @ 1 cent apiece.

    I understand that some folks have been known to set up dummy auctions that they win themselves and award ebay points in the process. I counsel against that, and it’s certainly against eBay’s terms and conditions.

  5. is there anyway besides for paying points.com $10 a month to do the ebay points to asia miles transfer?

  6. Since Asia Miles just joined Petro-Canada Petro Points program, you can transfer 10 Petro Points to 1 Asia Miles and Citi MasterCard has introduced their no annual fee Petro MasterCard with an earn ratio of $1 = 10 Petro Points, you essentially can earn $1=1 Asia Miles @ no annual fee and save 2 cents at the gas pump on top of that. Save the $150 that RBC charge and get the Citi Petro Card. This is the best Asia Miles earn ratio in Canada.

Comments are closed.