Cathay Pacific Asia Miles sweet spots

Cathay Pacific's Asia Miles program recently had a devaluation / readjustment, and there are some interesting sweet spots to be had with the new distance bands.

Sweet spots are redemptions that come in at the upper limit of a distance band, making them good value redemptions for that particular band, in terms of distance flown / Asia Mile.

In the case of Asia Miles, the band limits are 2,750, 5,000 and 7,500 miles. There isn't a large difference between the Asia miles costs for the 7,500 and 7,500+ mile bands, hence we'll focus mainly on the 2,750 and 5,000 mile bands.

As always, redemptions should be made for business-class and above, as the various fees and surcharges generally make economy class redemptions poor value for money.

1-way redemptions are particularly good value, as these tend to be exorbitantly expensive.

1.) Penang - Hong Kong - Jeju / 2,575 miles / 10,000 Asia Miles + RM283 each way on Cathay Dragon economy-class

Ok I know I said it's not worth it to redeem miles on economy-class flights, but this is actually not a bad deal. It's a single stop flight to Jeju (for all you Winter Sonata fans) and it normally costs RM2,700.

The downside is that you need to stay overnight in HKIA on the return leg, which will cost an extra RM250 on a twin share basis. Adding this RM250 to the RM566 in fees means that you're getting RM2,700 - RM816 = RM1,884 in value from the 20,000 Asia Miles, or over 9 cents per mile, a very decent amount.

2.) Maldives- Doha - Frankfurt / 4,904 miles / 50,000 Asia Miles + ~RM500 each way on Qatar Airways business-class

If you ever wanted to visit Europe with a stopover in Maldives, now's your chance! Sri Lankan Airways and a few LCCs fly there for very reasonable rates. Once you're there, you can look forward to 11.5 hours of Qatar Airways business class to your European destination.

You can also route to Milan, Zurich, Rome, Munich, Vienna or Prague for roughly the same costs. Cities further west like London or Paris are out because the distance would exceed 5,000 miles.

3.) Penang - Doha - Amman / 4,515 miles / 55,700 Asia Miles + ~RM500 each way on Qatar Airways business-class.

Jordan is usually a very expensive place to get to, but that's irrelevant when you're paying with miles! This is a great route, as you get to fly direct from Penang to Doha on Qatar Airways before connecting to Amman.

Interestingly enough, Qatar sells certain regional business-class routes as first class. The seat is the same but you get access to the exclusive Al-Safwa lounge. DOH-AMM is one of these routes so you'll get access to this amazing looking lounge.

4.) Australia - Hong Kong - America / 7,500+ miles / 85,000 Asia Miles + RM1,133 each way on Cathay Pacific business-class.

This is probably the best value redemption available. Asia Miles' top band is 7,500+ miles, and this redemption clocks in at a whopping 12,643 miles for the SYD-HKG-JFK route, but you'll still pay the same amount as a 7,501 mile redemption.

The cash cost of this flight is around RM20,000 return so you're getting incredible value for money.