Reader Barney wants to know why it’s gotten so hard to use his American Airlines AAdvantage miles to fly in premium cabins to Asia, or whether he’s imagining things? I’d say he’s right, and I think I know why.
In fact, I used to do it all the time myself with ease. One blogger used to say that I practically lived in Cathay Pacific first class.
And I used to redeem my American miles several times a year for Etihad first via the Mideast to Asia (places like Maldives, Sri Lanka, and India – or even Thailand as two separate awards).
Qantas first class crossings were doable for me too. Those are mostly out.
My wife and I travel to Southeast Asia every year since 2012. We never had a problem redeeming AA points for either first class or business class round trip originally at 70,000 points each. Several years ago business class jumped to 140,000 points each. We lived with that because we are fortunate to accumulate enough miles.
NOW, for the last 2 years we have not been able to redeem any miles to Asia for under 500,000 each and actually, there are never even any flight available using points. The same excuse is “They just haven’t released any flight yet.” I’m the type of person that checks regularly as well. We’ve back doored through Europe and paid from there. Not much different than a normal direct purchase.
My point, are you able to write an article on the decline of international points available using AA and their one world alliance? Is that really a thing or am I doing something amateur?
If possible, please advise if there is a better Credit Card for my wife and I to gain points towards Southeast Asia specifically. We use our credit card for our personal and business adding to quite a few points but hate that it’s gotten so ridiculous.
I’ve covered the issues with AA awards extensively, there are really several issues here with Asia. I’d note that American’s partner award pricing is still good! They haven’t devalued their partner award chart since October 2016. The problem is availability.
- American is reluctant to release space on its own flights, plus they don’t offer much Asia service to begin with (not a lot of seats total, paid or award). Their revenue management folks aren’t quite as bad as Delta’s, and it’s been a long-running trend since US Airways management took over, but it plays a role. Gradually the price of premium cabin awards has gone up on American metal for the most part.
- Their partners don’t release seats like they used to (Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific). Japan Airlines used to be reliable and on a schedule, but no longer, though occasionally there’s availability that comes and goes in waves.
- Cathay Pacific now reserves a lot of its award space for customers using their own Asia Miles and not partner program miles. This is a challenging issue that’s grown post-pandemic with many of American’s partners including Qantas, Qatar and Etihad.
- Asia flights have been full and selling at higher prices because there’s a lot less capacity between the US and Asia. That’s because US-China flying hasn’t recovered. Before the pandemic there was tons of excess capacity being sold at cheap prices on China routes, which made other flights cheaper, emptier, and available on points. This isn’t just an American/oneworld issue.
U.S. airlines have lobbied to block Chinese flights to the U.S. It used to be every Chinese carrier would jump into the U.S. market flying stupid routes because the Chinese government would only let one of its airlines fly each route. Carriers would squat on unprofitable routes with empty flights to be first into a market.
- Russian airspace restrictions. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. carriers have been unable to overfly Russian airspace. That’s made some routes impractical or impossible due to longer flying times, which results in less flying. And it means more demand for the remaining flights (and onward connections). This isn’t just an American/oneworld issue. Fewer flights and fewer seats, more demand, fewer seats going empty being dumped as award inventory.
- Plus Cathay Pacific was slow to rebuild its schedule after the pandemic, in part because there’s just less Hong Kong demand as that Chinese region has turned inward (Greater Bay Area), taken on a less prominent role in global business, and faced consequences of the crackdown on democracy.
American doesn’t fly enough to Asia and doesn’t have enough partners there! Star Alliance programs are better just because there are more options, but for credit card spend always best to earn points that transfer to a variety of different programs.
Star is no panacea! Award space on United to Asia isn’t good, it isn’t good on Air Canada or ANA and isn’t great on Singapore Airlines either although booking 10 months out or more can yield business class (the loss of Houston – Manchester – Singapore hurts here).
Asiana is tough. EVA Air space isn’t great either like it used to be, and space on Turkish going via Europe isn’t nearly so good. Air India is only good if you’re searching for one passenger. EVA Air does release far more award space to their own members, and Citi and Capital One (the latter at less than 1:1) do transfer to the EVA Air Infinity MileageLands program. Lufthansa via Europe is no longer good, either.
For SkyTeam, Korean Air used to be great, but the SkyPass program largely stopped having seats available much of the time which is a true shame. Try connecting on Saudia! Vietnam Airlines has been releasing more award space than it used to, so there’s that at least.
Emirates awards are expensive especially flying long distances but business class (or occasionally first class for one passenger, or redeem business then upgrade) can be doable.
What are your go-to strategies for Asia redemptions?
They all suck and it’s practically impossible nowadays to find anything value priced in J/F across the Pacific, even trying to book as soon as the window opens. The days of J/F sweet spot/cheap redemptions are over for most markets, imo.
I’m leaving for a 3 week trip to Asia next month starting in Taiwan and ending in Singapore. I booked 2 seats in Delta One SEA-TPE for 83,300 skymiles each (a rare good value for Sky Pesos I know) and then booked 2 J tickets on Singapore Airlines SIN-JFK for 111,500 Kris Flyer miles each (transferred from Amex Membership Rewards). Personally I may find the rare deal on AA, UA or DL and then use their points but typically I avoid booking alliance partner airlines due to space not being available, risk of phantom awards and concerns over coordination if their is a delay or other problem with the flight. I just load up on Amex, Chase and Citi points then transfer them directly to the carrier I want to book. It isn’t hard to find J to Asia for 80,000-120,000 miles each way but typically not through US airlines.
Booked 2 CX biz awards on 2 sets of flights (SFO- HKG- DEL and SFO-HKG- BOM) for summer travel 11 months out using AA miles. But availability dried up quickly and return flight awards were hard to come by on OW.
My strategy is to diversify my points earning on (AmEx, Cap1 & AA) so that you have more options when planning and booking premium long-haul award trips to Asia.
For me, it’s hope, pray, and take far fewer trips. Also, my last two trips featured a variety of carriers, since I could typically only find one direction first, and had to wait and hope I could find a return home. Thus, 2024 saw only one trip trans-Pacific, and 2025 is slated for just one as well. Tough and perilous to have a trip hanging on the scheduling and goodwill of multiple airlines, and my own personal health picture, but if I didn’t juggle all this, it’d be no trips westward at all.
Singapore had some good redemptions for business class from NYC-Asia several months ago, which I partook, but since then it’s only been Waitlist, which is not ideal.
The game at the moment has been less about points redemptions and more about sweet spots for ‘affordable’ long-haul business class, anywhere, not just Asia. Europe, Latin America, Africa are just as (if not more) expensive than before the pandemic.
There was a sweet spot between late-2020 and early 2022, where everything was half-price, but you had to be willing to risk travel during the pandemic, including the chance of getting stuck somewhere due to a bad PCR test, etc.
No idea where things go moving forward, but it does feel like the ‘good ole days’ are definitely over. Use what you got and no regrets.
If there are new wars, in say East Asia (like over Taiwan or in the Koreas), that’s gonna hurt international travel, like, a lot.
Missing piece of the story IMHO: last-minute availability. As we all celebrate US carriers’ policy of free cancel, let’s consider the cost; your neighbour has already booked that seat you want and he’ll cancel it an hour before takeoff. Our October AA flight JFK-HND was full in J the night before, but inflight there were 9 seats empty in J! My own travel habit is to book nearly all longhaul flights last-minute (sometimes day before). Availability is almost as good as the good ole days, just not weeks in advance.
I had luck finding JL F in the AA app but it wouldn’t book online. Before giving up, I ignored all the blog posts about “phantom availability”, hounded LiveChat to book JL F BKK-HND-ORD. They did, after some pushing and re-pushing. It wasn’t phantom, it was “we prefer not”. Oh, and in the app, they don’t enforce the rule “redeeming member must pay with name-match credit card”.
Traveling a lot to Asia these last 12 months, and the pain is real. I’ve often ended up just seeking out the routings with the lowest cost paid tickets in J.
I fly several round trips between Southeast Asia and the USA per year. I put the trips on a credit card. I put the miles on USA airline mileage accounts because the Asian airlines I fly have the miles expire before I can use them. I had some miles on a Singapore account that were going to expire this year that I gave to a charity after being alerted about it by an email (the flights had a long layover in Singapore each way but the tickets were cheap due to Singapore Airlines trying to get customers in early 2022). A few years ago I was able to use some EVA miles after buying some to hit the level I needed but I haven’t flown EVA since 2020.
Nice post on this and spot on. I might add that Japan has had record high tourism numbers so that isn’t helping this situation.
The tendency on this site is to put lipstick on a pig (American Airlines) and then wonder why and how it got there. AA is a pig digging a hole further below bottom. Enough said.
AA could update their routing rules and allow for Atlantic travel to Asia with connections. As mentioned, it won’t help a lot but this only one direction of travel rule is unnecessary, so maybe it’s time to let those who want to get to Asia on and any route with availability the option to do so.
Many of the factors correctly enumerated by Gary are temporary, and they won’t last forever. For transpacific award redemptions in premium cabins in the meantime, I’ve been successful in finding those awards, even though I had to be more flexible on dates and connections. For the near term, I’m actually more concerned about the potential of AA devaluation.
@1990
“If there are new wars, in say East Asia (like over Taiwan or in the Koreas), that’s gonna hurt international travel, like, a lot.”
At the very least, travel will be your least concern.
Although living in Miami I’m willing to fly (business class miles) out of any US city to Ahmedabad India which up to a year ago, gave a choice of Qatar and Ethiad or could even go through a European city with a partner airline to Delhi or Mumbai. Have been checking going on 3 months now, every day twice or thrice a day for early Feb availability but nada. Trying to get a one way return from there is proving just as impossible………..
Any solution would be appreciated
Thanks. Living this right now, with 3 of us going premium economy in JAL on the way to Tokyo and AA on the way back, both in premium economy and not business. And we have to get ourselves to LAX from NYC to get there. Never had this happen before (with 2 or 3 people, even), though we are admittedly not that flexible on this one due to school vacation and we’ll keep flinging ourselves at it up until departure. Gary/all — does AA understand that even as a lifetime Platinum, I’m taking my pretty large card spend per year to something (generic, airline wise) other than the Citi AA Card quite specifically because of the absurd AA metal award prices to Asia and the decline of partner availability? Do they simply not care because, as ever, it’s only those of us in the top 1-2% of knowledge who are moving our card spend for this reason — and plenty of 1-2% people like the fancy AA cards for lounge access and Exec Plat qualification through spend only? (Also, definition of phantom availability here, I’d not run into that before: https://travel-on-points.com/phantom-award-space )
I have flown several times Pacific flights booked with points. Now I just prefer to outright book PE or Business on SQ when possible. They have surprisingly good rates and occasional sales. (I got my April/May) flights during their “black Friday” sale near Thanksgiving.
I can chose my dates and know I will get exceptional service without stressing about miles or availability.
I’ve been waiting on this article and have to doubt China is all the sudden going to start running more USA trips.
Nor is Russian airspace going to get better.
Recently we got J on AA last minute, to Tokyo, but at 140k AA miles! Double partners.
We also bought PE on SQ… As we were flush on LP’s for 24. Not for the faint of heart!
Never would have imagined that flying to Asia on AA metal would be something to consider and now looks like a contender.
Airlines would rather sell an upgrade for $1 than give up any saver availability to frequent flier program members. Apart from this, mileage brokers are sniping all the availability. I have never seen it this bad and I work in these programs booking awards for clients every day. It’s brutal and it isn’t just Asia.
I do S.E. Asia a couple of times a year and generally on Singapore, which I love and have flown for over 35 years. But the flip over lie flat in Business sucks and has hurt their business I would bet. As an example, I’ve flown the SIN-MAN-IAH route for convenience but dreaded those seats and MAN customs and then hate the flight length on top of all that. Probably many others like me booked alternatives for the same reasons. I’d sign up for IAH-HKG-SIN for sure or another fifth-freedom route if SQ flew it particularly after they get the new interiors and seats in 26. That would help Asia availability. Also, has anyone heard any more talk about UA flying BKK again? Not sure why they haven’t, this should be a moneymaker and they know the turf.
Asia Miles by Cathay Pacific is my go to right now and Philippine airlines mabuhay miles.
However, you have to look for space in Cathay Pacific 9 months out. For Philippine airlines its 11 months out.
I live at a Delta hub and I’ve resorted to paying cash for non-stop flights to Asia rather than an overpriced award with 2 connections to Asia on another carrier.
Definitely harder than ever to fly J transpacific using miles, for all the reasons mentioned in ther article and comment section :). It’s become a race to see who can get it first, or someone gets lucky to get it.
Hopefully more people get discouraged and give up so that it will be “easier” for the serious points travelers to get award seats.
What annoys me is all the wannabe people on social media blasting to the world how easy it is to “fly for free”. When too many people want a limited item, very few end up getting it.
I’ll be the contrarian and say I’ve never been flying to Asia more on miles. NH C and F from HNL, ORD, SFO are quite easy to get (with occasional seats from JFK). JL F from ORD is still relatively easy to get (and DFW/JFK still open up from time to time w/ new product). EVA using their own program is widely available.
Australia/NZ often opens in saver close to departure with UA and upgrades on AA and UA are plentiful due to oversupply of seats.
@Cat’s mom, try going the other way for the return. Your first flight should be to a large city airport in Asia or Southeast Asia such as Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong (or Taipei). The next flight should be to the west coast of the USA. The last flight would be to Miami. Reverse the directions to go the other way. This is longer but there are probably more competing flights so availability should be better.
All the new award availability tools also impact it. What once took work and some level of knowledge can now be found with a few clicks
The guy about going to SE Asia every year in premium class: cry me a f***** river. Other people want to experience it as well so if you have a problem with award availability even though you have ad the opportunity for a couple of years now, just pound sand, no sympathy for you.
I managed to do Tokyo twice last year – JAL in J from HNL-HND with Avios via AY (Finnair) at a decent rate. First flight I paid to get to HNL on AA. Second I flew with Southwest to HNL with miles.
Checking AA vs AY and BA award flights HNL-HND for the same dates in June, I’m seeing no availability with AA and some with AY and BA (not direct – via Kansai and Osaka). My Avios are from booking paid AA to Europe and adding my BAEC account and then transferring Avios to Finnair to use when I need to at a better rate than BA. It’s a roundabout way to do it.
The interesting thing in trying to redeem any Oneworld award availability within Asia is inconsistent even amongst partners. I’m just trying to get any availability for mid January (18/19) between Manila and Kuala Lumpur… And this is what I found :
AA – no award availability on MH/CX
AS – Availability via HKG and BKK on CX & MH in both X and U class
BA and QR – both showing availability on MH direct flight
@1990
“If there are new wars, in say East Asia (like over Taiwan or in the Koreas), that’s gonna hurt international travel, like, a lot.”
That’s when you strike, while the war zone is hot. People canx travel. Boom the $$s and award cost plummet. I’ve done this several times. Take advantage of a crisis. It’s all so localized, but people still freak and voila, you’re going for cheap. Not to mention the costs of hotels, etc.
I’ll put my two cents worth for the reasons: capacity and Covid.
First, correct me if I am wrong but AA doesn’t offer flights from either DFW or LAX direct to HKG. Second, Cathay used to offer 4 flights daily from HKG to LAX. Now it is two or three flights a day. Finally, Post-COVID the airlines haven’t opened up the award seats favoring to get revenue from the limited availability.
As for the last minute availability, I have had the best luck with United for biz awards. It is like winning the lottery to find good awards on AA or Alaska anymore.
We’ll have to wait for the capacity to return. By that time, there will be an oversupply of miles held by mileage members. That will create yet another problem for finding awards.
Some thoughts:
1) As many have pointed out, things have a tendency to open up closer in to the departure date. I just helped a friend find 2 biz tix on Air New Zealand from LAX to Auckland 1 month prior to departure. This is a challenge for me psychologically because I am a ‘planner’ and for a long time, this worked very much to my advantage. Now, I am having to adapt.
2) I think having a card like Amex is the way to go from here on out as you have more flexibility to transfer miles directly into the program where they are actually offering availability (and not relying on partner awards).
3) I have also become more adept at using my Amex points and looking for ‘loop holes’ to get what I need. For example, I just transferred Amex points to British Airways (One World) to purchase 2 biz tix on LatAm (Sky Team) from Lima to Miami. This is just one of those funky partnerships that is probably not obvious to most.
4) If you are going to still play this game, it requires flexibility, patience and dedication.
@Gary @AC, et. al. I can’t really speak to the overall availability of award travel to Asia. I mostly travel from the West Coast to Europe, but this Spring, my wife and I are going to Japan for the first time. We all know that award travel means being flexible in scheduling. When planning a vacation, the first thing we do is to find the award space and book the tickets…THEN, we plan the rest of the trip. Using Alaska miles, we got two r/t tickets in Business on JAL for 60k each way. For us, the “trick” (if there is one) was to fly from Hawai’i, rather than California. Not only was there availability, but less miles were required, and the redemption value worked out to 10.8¢/point. To get to HNL, we used our Alaska Companion Fare for one of us to get to Hawai’i for $99+tax.
Air India isn’t good, regardless of how many passengers. I’m surprised the report was that Turkish had bedbugs, not AI. Bedbugs are moving up in the world.
Thanks for the explanation about AA — I’m sitting on a ton of miles, and can never seem to use them for travel to Asia (although I AM booked in JAL first from BKK-HND-LAX in June)
One quick correction — Cap One transfers to EVA at BETTER than 1:1. It transfers at 1:1.5.
Granted, Cap One transfers to all other airlines at 2:1, but it is still better than 1:1 to EVA.
IMHO, EVA’s availability to its members is the best in the business. I often find availability when nothing else is available with others, and the rate (75k from West Coast all the way to BKK) is hard to beat.