Asia miles kind of sucks in TW, you can more or less only fly to HK with them in my experience.
Get some card that gives you points for EVA instead. Here is a list of cards for EVA http://www.evaair.com/en-us/infinity-mileagelands/earning-mileage/partners/
Yes you can fly to HK, and then all of the places they fly to from HK. It really depends where they want to fly as to what the best choice is. However, Asia Miles gives you objectively more for less miles than either of the Taiwanese airlines.
Not really sure what you are getting at. With asiamiles you can more or less only fly to hk, and then either stay in hk or continue somewhere else. With Eva from Taipei you have something like 100 more destinations you can fly to.
Layovers are a big no no for me. A layover puts many places out of reach if you only plan on going for the weekend, or extended weekend.
You cannot really go to e.g. Bangkok over the weekend if you need to have a layover in Hong Kong, it makes a 4h flight to a 7h flight.
Youâve just answered what Iâm getting at, you can fly to HK and then go somewhere else (btw, a 1 hour transfer in HK is easily done).
Thatâs why it depends what they want from an airline. If Eva or CA donât have good options for your most common route, theyâre clearly not better.
To add to that, you can fly the Oneworld airlines and Air China using Asia Miles. That would give a lot of direct options to China and Japan.
I use a Citibank card, and the points I accumulate there can be transferred to a bunch of different airlines, so youâre not stuck with just one. Bonus that the points have lifetime validity âon your cardâ, not like EVA points that expire after three years.
That being said - I havenât tried to use them yet. I suspect Iâll face all kinds of trauma with transferring points only to discover that tickets are no longer available. If anyone does have experience transferring points to an airline, and then trying to redeem them, Iâd love to hear how it went.
This is tricky without HKID if you dont have a connecting flight, but instead have to go out and checkin in again.
Besides, even 1h layover in HK kind of sucks if you leave for HCMC on Friday night after work and plan on coming back Sunday evening.
The one hour layer doesnât also just mean 1h longer trip, all the time spent on the tarmac, etc. in HK would still add another 2h to travel time.
Asiamiles booking sucks for all else except CA and Cathay Dragon.
For the other ones you need to use some paper form and sh*t like that, is not really possible to book anything else than CA and Cathay Dragon a few days prior to going.
If youâre travelling on Asia Miles youâre almost certainly gonna be booked through. Regardless, thatâs why it depends on your main routes. Sure, if you are mostly interested in weekend getaways then Cathay makes less sense, but for long haul another two hours to your journey is minor, especially if it gets you to the airport you want at the time you want, which Eva and CA canât do for me.
Eva Air one way redemption to the US or Europe is over 100,000 miles in Economy. Cathayâs longest economy redemption is 63,000 miles.
Anyone choosing which air miles to collect needs to think about their own personal usage and circumstances before deciding.
Cathay Costco is indeed the easiest one to get if you have a well paying job. Walk in to the counter @ Costco, fill out the application, submit a ATM receipt showing decent savings and youâre done.