Yeah I doubt I would be out of 5/24 anytime ever with all the fun new stuff out there but I did what everyone else did, walk into a branch I guess there is some benefit in being a customer after all these years.

1m treat points assuming you have the Maybank Premiere is around 210k miles in Enrich/Krisflyer/Asia Miles

Off the top of my head, a return trip to NYC in first is roughly 220-240k, you'll have to check the respective airline charts for details.

SQ Suites is notoriously hard to get but definitely doable a year out.
CX First is my personal favorite, but their one way will cost more than return.
Etihad/Qatar/Japan/Lufthansa First are all open if you book either oneworld or using star alliance charts of the respective airlines above. I know Etihad availability is decent a year out, not sure about the others as I've never tried them before that far out.

Don't forget YQ fees which can be exorbitant.

Value is something only you can answer.

1. do I value cash or miles more? What if you can get an award for less miles, but more fees/YQ?
2. would you spend time (on the phone, online etc) to save some miles vs. spend miles/cash to save time?

Go to the individual websites to get a feel for 1 and 2. Only you can decide because value for money vs. time spent vs. miles is a personal judgement.

Have never done RTW with either carrier, only regular awards.

1. You should be able to change the date subject to their change fee (10k AM) and availability. Not much flexibility beyond that however.

2. Yes YQ is higher and general availability of the SQ suites is pretty limited on KF unless you have status. But no idea about RTW unfortunately.

3. Maybank takes at most a week to transfer to KF or AM or Enrich for that matter. Enrich tends to be fastest within a day, AM and KF within 2-3 days. Do an initial transfer first (1k miles each) to "activate" the transfer and future transfers are pretty painless in my personal experience.

Good luck

Have used expertflyer and awardnexus, briefly tried KVS. Awardnexus would be useful to find routing but I sometimes end up with just the Avios search engine for Oneworld routes.

I only briefly tried KVS, but I'm wondering what you're expecting out of a tool like this?

For me, awardnexus allows searches across a range of parameters (dates, destinations etc) that is just time consuming to enter manually into the Asia Miles or Avios system. It doesn't however have any intelligence to piece itineraries together, that's the human's job IMO.

Frequently airlines also don't want certain combinations and will show it as waitlisted/not available even if you can find the individual segments.

Try out awardnexus then, it does all the routes within an alliance, but typically limited by the intelligence of the back end system ie. avios or JL in the case of oneworld.

Unfortunately none of the tools are smart enough to take into account the 5 destinations in the US CX flies to that you can position with AA to maximize award availability for example. Or flying into LHR and out of CDG/AMS to reduce UK APD on an award ticket.

I'm sure someone somewhere will build a machine learning tool to take into account all the above rules but I'm too lazy to do that lol

Why more Asia Miles than Krisflyer? I'm assuming these aren't Maybank Premiere TP?

Upgrading from Y requires you to buy from Y, B, H, K or M fare classes, ie. the more expensive fare classes. Just pulling numbers out of thing air, your options for KL to London might be:

a. RM3k on MH, QR etc
b. RM6-10k for an upgradeable economy fare on CX + 60k for a return J upgrade
c. 120k AM + fees for a full J award redemption

When I poked around ITA matrix, the price for a B fare class KL to London on CX is closer to RM13k which is why I almost always recommend against upgrading using miles, unless someone else is paying the for the flight ticket.

Spend more money, get more points

Now if you can position yourself in Europe one way for cheap, you definitely have the option of doing a one way return in J. AM or KF.

Most airlines would have the same rule ie. no upgrades on the cheapest economy tickets. I know MH would state up front when a fare is not upgradeable. I haven't looked at SQ but I'm guessing they'd be the same.

So in short you'd be stuck paying expensive fares to upgrade.

Don't forget that both CX and SQ now have Premium economy (PEY) so it'll be a two step upgrade. Availability is best on MH, CX and SQ in that order.

In the end you'll have to decide whether or not it's worth it. Or you could also wait for sales and get flights on QR or EY in J for around RM6k to far flung places in Europe that nobody wants to go to, like Munich

This post has been edited by tishaban: Mar 1 2017, 07:02 PM

With the recent announcement YQ on SQ should be in line with CX after 23 March 2017.

Depends on whether you can easily get miles or not. In that specific case above, I can easily earn RM2.5k, but spending RM40k to make up the 40k mile is not so straightforward.

For others who put their business expenses on a credit card or just spent a lot of money the reverse would be true.

The chart shows zones based on distance in miles.

Choose the flight that you want eg. KUL-LHR
Plug it into gcmap dot com and get an estimated amount of miles.
Don't forget all the airports in between.

For me, the comparison between collecting treatpoints vs. frequent flyer miles is always cashback.

Assuming 2% cashback is the general amount for regular spend, the amount I get back from an economy class Asia Miles redemption is roughly 5-6% (RM66.5k spend on Amex Reserve earns 70k Asia Miles which in turn can earn me a RM4k economy class ticket to the US. If I spend ~RM130k on Amex Reserve earning 135k Asia Miles, I can redeem for a RM15k business class ticket to the US so a 11.5% return.

You'll have to calculate the return on Air Asia to compare.

This is only valid if you can spend enough and want to redeem those types of tickets. If you can't spend enough to earn enough points for a flight redemption, maybe it's better to convert to cash/coupons.

Depends very much on which FFP you have miles in, or which credit card program you have miles in.
If for example you have MBB TP then obviously it'll cost less to convert to asia miles and book through there.

The difference is the number of miles needed, the airport tax + fees you have to pay and how easy it is to get seats from each FFP program.

TP to Enrich/AM is the same correct.
However the miles required to fly say KUL-LHR using Enrich vs AM is different. Usually Enrich requires more miles than AM.
Fees are different.
Also availability is different, ability to book on different airlines is different etc. Usually Enrich is far easier to get seats on MH than AM on CX/QR/BA.
You'll have to poke around the dates and destinations you have in mind and decide whether or not you can get what you want.

The asia miles website will only waitlist CX flights.

I haven't found it that cheap but good for your, book quickly.

As a comparison, Asia Miles KUL-LHR/AMS/CDG is 60k for a return flight in economy, 120k for a return flight in business class. MH is usually 80k in economy, 300k in business for a return flight.

You can check before you buy your tickets by clicking "Fare Rules" or "Booking Details". The latter is much easier to read.
If you don't like the booking class, choose a higher fare eg. Economy Smart