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

I'm actually kind of curious, where does awardnexus get their data? Do they just have crawlers looking at all the different backends? I know that Expertflyer get their data legitimately...

I'm almost tempted of spending time building my own crawler to get a list of available dates on CX


Thanks dctravels. I actually was a bit disappointed with KVS because I had read earlier reviews saying that they had access to SABRE but that's no longer the case...

So for your MCARs, did you book those 2-3 trips as a single award or as multiple awards? I've heard that it's not possible to backtrack multiple times to the same city but then again the information on that is not very clear.


So far my idea of a route would be something like:

CDG/FRA(or any other city in Europe)-HKG/SIN-SYD-TYO-HNL and then an open jaw to leave from JFK back to the city I departed from.

It could really work with both CX and SQ. I'm kind of leaning toward CX because I need less miles and then I can pay for a SQ first suites award another time with the remaining miles or book for next year. I've had a lot of business expenses that went to my credit card this year so I earned a lot of miles with the Maybank 2 premier but I don't expect that to happen next year.

By the way, what happens if I'm a no show for the last leg of my trip? I might decide to visit south american countries instead of going back to Europe.


One thing you might look at is booking with BA, BA's premium economy is often relatively cheap and last time I did that all premium economy fare classes (W,T,E) were upgradable with Asia miles. It's 30,000 miles to upgrade to J.

One thing to watch out for is that you cannot upgrade a mix carrier trip. So if you book something like CDG-LHR-KUL-LHR-CDG you're fine but if you have a segment going to Penang for example, then you won't be able to upgrade any of the flight since that segment would be on MH.

This post has been edited by gommm: Mar 1 2017, 07:51 PM

QR - Qatar, EY - Emirates?
Return J class for RM6k really? That's quite cheap, but never had good experience with Qatar airlines though. Their toilets are so damn smelly the few times I've used them. Could even smell them few rows away =.=

The SQ at RM4K and MH at RM3.5k wasn't the cheapest though. It's a tier above the economy saver promo, I assume those are upgradeable?

Wow 30k AM to upgrade to J is cheap. Is that return or just 1 way?
And how much was the premium economy return for BA, KUL -> LHR?

I've had bad experiences in Economy with QR but in J they are not bad. Service is not as good as SQ or even BA (the QR crew almost always look like they don't really want to be there) but everything else is good.

They do have sometimes very good sales. I bought my parents tickets from Europe to Japan for RM5k/ticket this January

It's return. See https://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redeem/charts

You do need to have upgrade award availability. At the time I did that, I had set up an alert of ExpertFlyer and booked when I saw that it was available.

I paid 1020 euros for CDG -> KUL return in premium economy last year. Not sure about the prices ex-KUL.

It still ends up being cheap for a J seat, That said if you can grab a J seat for RM6k or 7k during a sale with QR or EY, it's a better deal. Especially since QR's J seat are better than the seats from BA (haven't tried EY but I imagine they are good).

This post has been edited by gommm: Mar 1 2017, 07:46 PM

Ooh thanks, so ExpertFlyer alerted you on seats which are available for upgrade? Is it usually easy to snag those seats once available?
And what was the total extra surcharge you had to pay for the upgrade?
I assume you will have to have AM points parked in your account first in order for a fast transaction.

SQ no longer feels worthwhile now that they removed their 15% discount for redemption...

My MCARs were all a single award. Some agents will refuse backtracking to same city, others are more lenient. YMMV. My last MCAR I was a no show for the last sector. Not quite sure what you mean by what will happen. Since it was the last sector and all previous sectors were flown, we just did not show up.

any idea how much YQ does SQ charge for EVA Air redemption using krisflyer? I know the points requirement is higher, but as points earning is no issue for me, i'd like to minimize paying cash outright when redeeming flight. Was abit shocked when i check two tickets to europe (inbound - Munich, outbound - Milan) and the fees and tax came up to about almost RM 5k for 2 pax..

This compared to the RM 1k i was charged for redeemping CX using EN miles. Surcharge is damm ouch.

I'm stuck on earning a portion of my points in KF due to MBB regulation on utilities payment.

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

I just got this email this morning... looks like no more 15% discount, upside is no more YQ on SQ flights. Yay.

According to OMAAT, most of the award price increases seem to be about 30%, after factoring in the 15% online booking discount being eliminated. However, that’s somewhat offset by the elimination of fuel surcharges.

First/Suites Class:
New York/Houston to Singapore — current price: 93,500 miles / new price: 120,000 miles
Los Angeles/San Francisco to Singapore — current price: 91,375 miles / new price: 118,000 miles
New York to Frankfurt — current price: 57,375 miles / new price: 76,000 miles

Business Class:
New York/Houston to Singapore — current price: 72,250 miles / new price: 92,000 miles
Los Angeles/San Francisco to Singapore — current price: 68,000 miles / new price: 88,000 miles
New York to Frankfurt or Houston to Moscow — current price: 48,875 miles / new price: 65,000 miles

Economy Class:
New York/Houston to Singapore — current price: 31,875 miles / new price: 40,000 miles
Los Angeles/San Francisco to Singapore — current price: 29,750 miles / new price: 38,000 miles
New York to Frankfurt or Houston to Moscow — current price: 17,000 miles / new price: 22,500 miles

for me, i don't mind the slight point increase cos i'm stuck with KF miles anyway. Having not to pay crazy surcharges is more important.

Wow, i have done a dummy search for KUL-LAX return in Business Class and found the following:



Does it mean by the removal of YQ, the sub-total for return KUL-LAX in Business Class will become 176,000 miles + MYR 463.10 miles (instead of 136,000 miles + MYR 2,955.10 now)?

I have the same question as well. If thats the case, i guess its worth forgoing the 15% and save on the surcharges and insurance.

For Enrich miles. Anyone can share how to check exactly many points we need to fly to a particular place?
I only found a chart which state the required points to travel to different zones.
I manage to find it for Air Asia Big Point but not MH Enrich miles point.

Uhh if your credit card expenditure is very high then sure. But for Maybank card you'd need to spend an extra RM68K just to compensate that difference!
With Premier card probably RM30k+ extra.

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.

Thanks for the head up.
It is so less convenient compare to air asia huh.

I am currently comparing to use credit card point convert to Air Asia or Malaysia Airline air miles. Need to see which is more worth.

Air Asia is more worthwhile in terms of value savings since they often have promo on points redemption and their fares are usually much cheaper than MAS. But you're comparing a budget airline to a proper one, so not a really fair comparison.

And you are limited to Air Asia network range, MAS has wider choices of destinations.

This post has been edited by Lego Warfare: Mar 2 2017, 01:57 PM

Yes, understand all these.
I just need simple flight to East Malaysia mostly.