In the early wee hours of the morning I flagged a huge opportunity – wide open first class awards on Cathay Pacific for two passengers on the New York JFK – Hong Kong route. It turns out better than I’d even written, with September available as well.
Wide open HKG-JFK first class awards using Cathay Pacific Asia Miles March 29 – July 31 for two passengers. https://t.co/uVtVETmJiL pic.twitter.com/DLO5hrjG4h
— gary leff (@garyleff) October 15, 2025
This is only possible to book using Cathay Pacific’s own Asia Miles. They no longer make as much award space available to their partners. And Cathay gets a ton of miles for these seats. However, Asia Miles is also a transfer partner of American Express, Citibank, Capital One and Bilt.
Spencer Howard‘s excellent Straight to the Points award alerts newsletter flagged available dates:
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These seats are bookable online, and also by phone – Cathay Pacific will still place awards on hold (generally for up to 3 days) over the phone. They charge 160,000 points each way per person for this product.
Don’t forget that Cathay Pacific first class comes with first class lounge access – and that you can connect onward beyond Hong Kong (where The Pier first class lounge is truly amazing).
You might even connect onward in business class elsewhere in Asia or to Australia or New Zealand. For just Hong Kong, you aren’t going to pay fuel surcharges (amounts vary by destination) so it’ll be just taxes on top of the points.
I was recently able to put a partner award on hold using Cathay’s chat feature….for those like me who hate calling on the phone.
Cool, if you want to go to Hong Kong in-style, I guess… Interesting how Spencer Howard‘s Straight to the Points is not affiliated with Boarding Area blogs like VFTW, LALF, and OMAAT. Curious.
Meh. The Hongkers just ain’t what it used to be. I’ll stick to Japan.
Congratulations on the first class award tickets.. their business class used to be great but has a really gotten downhill over the past few years. After a recent trip from Europe to Hong Kong, I decided no more business class on Cathay.
@Mike Hunt — You sayin’ like… since 1997? Or, since Beijing tightened its grip on Hong Kong following the Umbrella Movement in 2014, ultimately, with the CCP arresting student leaders, forcing its new national security law in 2020, and reworking HK’s election system in 2021…
It remained a really exciting, vibrant place from 1997 until around the Yellow Umbrella movement. Things started to gradually go downhill after that, but the pandemic really poured gasoline onto the decline. Many of the areas that were loads of fun back in the day (Stanley, SoHo, Wanchai) are now but a shadow of their former selves. Even Lan Kwai Fong feels very different. Crime is up. The arts and culture scene that was there before have vanished due to government suppression. The fun neon signs that dotted Sai Ying Pun and Sheung Wan have mostly been taken down. So many Mainlanders have moved in that everyone is now greeted with Putonghua instead of Cantonese. The overall “magic” of Hong Kong that one could experience up until around the mid-to-late 2010s quite sadly isn’t there anymore, and the natives and long-time expats will largely attest to this. Nothing is forever I suppose. Such is life.
Thanks Gary. Just scored a first class seat on the way home from Bali. While dated, I still like Cathay First and will happily drink their Krug and eat their caviar…
I was there last month for the first time in 7 years. Really enjoyed it but note that it’s EXPENSIVE now. Not like the old days. Flying into Japan afterwards was a relief cost wise. Strange because it was completely the opposite back in the 2000s
So many fond memories of the LAX-HKG-DPS route “in the old days” using American Airlines miles, 125k each way. It’s easy to spend a 5 hour layover in the beautiful Sir Norman Foster CX first class lounge with soaring ceilings and abundant daylight! But it was interesting with the second leg CGK-DPS, over the years I was flying they used different equipment with different layouts: from a 747 with no “First” but the equipment had First Class seats and the FA’s apologized that the food and beverage was merely Business as Cathay did not offer First on that leg, to the traditional 1-2-1 business nice seats, to a very disappointing 2-3-2 “Business” on a couple of flights. Those years were 2003-2017 before the First Class awards disappeareed from American Airlines mileage. I guess I was just lucky!
@ Drew – The Sir Norman Foster–designed lounge known as The Cabin at HKG closed in April of 2018. It was actually business class lounge. The Wing opened as the first class lounge in 1998 and was overhauled in 2013. The Pier was added as a first class lounge in 2015, closed during the pandemic, and reopened in July of 2023. The Wing closed this past May for another overhaul and is slated to reopen sometime next year.