[Biz Class Deal Alert] ORD + LAX to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific

Edited: The prior version indicated there was a 30% transfer bonus with AMEX instead of Chase to multiple Avios airlines.

Don’t just limit yourself to Hong Kong, if using Finnair Avios, you can also fly to Taipei with a connection in HKG also for 85k Avios (other cities usually don’t show up on Finnair though but test it to be sure). You could also fly to/from LAX and most of Asia for 88-115k points one way when booking directly with Cathay and to/from ORD for 115k. This includes Singapore, Manila, Bangkok, Hanoi, Beijing, and Shanghai among many others!

1) On Finnair’s site, log in to your Finnair account or create one if you haven’t already.

2) Once logged in, choose the “Award flight” option, put in destinations, and choose business class and put in a specific date. Then hit search.

3) Find dates that work for your travel plans that have 85k points availability. Also make sure there are enough seats as well (search the same flight with the desired number of seats) before transferring points.

1) On Cathay Pacific’s site, log in to your Cathay account or create one if you haven’t already.

2) Once logged in, on the home page, choose “Book a trip”, then choose the “Redeem flights” option. Enter you dates, destination, cabin class, choose one-way, then search.

3) Find days with availability that work with your travel plans. There is usually a weekly calendar view that will pop up as well if there is availability within ± 3 days from the day you searched. If there is no availability within that timeframe, you’ll see a pop-up message and no weekly calendar view. In that case, just keep searching manually on Cathay’s site until you can find award availability.

Finnair: 85k Avios + ~$106 in tax/fees. €50 change/cancel fee
Cathay: 88k (LAX/HKG) or 115k (ORD/HKG) + ~$100-172 in tax/fees. $120 cancel fee or $50 change fee

Aer Lingus, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, and Qatar all use Avios as their points currency. This means you can actually transfer points freely between all five of those programs (with some caveats). A more detailed explanation can be found here (The Points Guy) but you can link multiple Avios-based loyalty accounts on the Avios website.

This is important because a credit card transfer bonus may be to one Avios airline but not another (such as Citi’s 40% bonus to Qatar but not to British Airways). But because they can be freely moved around from the five major Avios airlines, you’d want to transfer Citi to Qatar to get the bonus and then move the points to British Airways (or to Iberia, Finnair, Aer Lingus etc.)

Every credit card program transfers to at least one of these airlines, which then lets you move them to Finnair to book at the best Avios rate (Finnair wants 85k points, British Airways wants 108k points for the same flight, and Qatar wants 155k for that same flight!)

An important caveat is if your Iberia account is less than 90 days old (you should honestly avoid transferring directly to Iberia given their notoriously bad IT and customer service), you cannot move points from Iberia to another Avios program.