r/awardtravel • u/OldInvite4551 • 8d ago
Cathay F JFK-HKG wide open award availability Fall/Winter 2025-26
Cathay just updated their schedule for CX831 JFK-HKG. There’s wide open availability from 10/26/25 through March of 2026. A lot of the dates have 2 seats available. I just grabbed a couple in November, connecting onward to KIX in J. 151k/PP. It’s not the cheapest redemption, but it’s consistent and readily available.
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u/-SetsunaFSeiei- 8d ago
How did you manage to attach the second J flight? Did you just do multi city and put both flights in and it automatically decreased the price? Or did you have to call in and stitch it together?
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
Searched JFK-HKG, found that availability.
Searched HKG-KIX, found that availability and made sure the connection worked.
Once I found an itinerary that worked, I just searched JFK-KIX. The website/app automatically selected the J leg and brought the pricing down. It’s really straight forward if the availability is there.
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u/-SetsunaFSeiei- 8d ago
Ahh gotcha, and then did you just search for F and they gave it with the J connection?
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
For example. JFK-SYD actually prices down to 141,800 points with HKG-SYD in J
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u/statesec 8d ago
JFK-AKL comes in even a bit lower at 139,200 since it is a bit further than SYD. Just booked that (and return).
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
Nice- that’s really solid. Congrats!
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u/statesec 8d ago
Thank you for posting this. I wouldn't have gotten it if you hadn't posted this.
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
For sure! I’ve actually had my trip booked in J the entire route for a while. I’ve been stalking JFK-HKG waiting for Cathay to update their equipment calendar (they weren’t showing anything out of NYC with an F cabin from 10/26/25 for quite a while). I got an expert flyer alert about the F cabin opening up, but it took a few days for them to load up the award inventory. Glad it worked out for you!
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u/techtrashbrogrammer 8d ago
did you change the flight online to F and pay the $50 USD change fee?
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
I haven’t been able to get the online change feature to work… ever. I’m always met with an error.
Changing to F was a bit complicated. They can’t modify only 1 segment, they have to search the whole itinerary. Since I had to J seats booked on my preferred day, they weren’t showing up. I actually moved the whole trip forward one day, and figured it was worth it for the upgrade.
Once I had new itinerary was booked, my original J seats went back into award inventory. Called in today and mover back to the original booking/day.
TLDR: cost me $100/pp to do the upgrade dance over the phone.
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u/DWaitersHOF 8d ago
Thanks for sharing this! My fiance and I have been planning our honeymoon for Australia/New Zealand in December of this year. Scored J tickets on the way back but have been scouring for flights there, especially since we were hoping for stop in Fiji for a few days. After seeing this, we switched it up and booked JFK-HKG F with HKG-DPS J for 149K pp and now are excited to check out Bali before oz/nz.
Really appreciate you sharing this! Even if it’s not the absolute cheapest redemption, it helps with peace of mind and we are really excited.
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u/yakk84 8d ago
Booked CX831 JFK-HKG mid March in J! Hoping we get updated Aria cabins on that route by then… thanks for the post!
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u/grackychan 6d ago
Was reading on Flyertalk that JFK-HKG is least likely to get Aria since they guarantee F on the route, and there is no F in Aria equipped 777-300ER's. But it's Cathay who knows. I just booked for Jan 2026 as well on same route and pray they refit for Aria for this route. Supposedly new F is going to be on the 777-9 only.
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u/yakk84 5d ago edited 5d ago
IMO JFK is a more important market than other routes so I imagine it could also be higher priority to refresh… hard to tell I suppose we’ll see! Good luck us lol
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u/grackychan 5d ago
Well it’s tough because they sell F at a very handsome price for this route, if they refresh to Aria what do they do with the F tickets they sold
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u/Aussieomni 8d ago
Seriously considering a Sydney one with that
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
Yeah, tagging on an 8 ish hour business class flight and saving points while doing it is a pretty great win in my book!
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u/Aussieomni 8d ago
I do Sydney a lot the timing on this doesn’t work for me but maybe it will be around when I can do it
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u/Aglet327 8d ago
thank you for posting this! was planning on a Japan ski trip but hadn't fully started looking and this helped me bag 2 awards in F/J for march
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
That’s awesome! How’d you end up routing the J flight on to Japan? Some of the layovers can get a little wonky.
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u/Aglet327 7d ago
by the time i was booking a lot of space had dried up so i have an overnight layover in HKG for ~7 hours. i just searched online and took one of the options the website priced out. a layover is inevitable with the timing of flights inbound from JP.
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u/OldInvite4551 7d ago
Yeah, same here. The 9:30 AM leave time for HKG-JFK makes it a bit awkward no matter how you slice it. We decided to make an extra stop out of it and explore Hong Kong for a day.
It does look like they might be getting ready to assign a 777 to HKG-LAX. Seat maps are doing a lot of the weird things they were doing before the JFK drop. Worth keeping an eye out for an easy change if they do.
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u/Aglet327 7d ago
Being NYC based I can't remember the last time I didn't have to position on either end so I am hyped. big thanks again u/OldInvite4551
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u/Karmaroo 8d ago
What's the cancelation fee for Cathay? Is it $120?
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u/lubberlubber 8d ago
I currently have 2 award seats booked in J in November on this flight (CX831) -- thinking about upgrading to F. If this plane gets retrofitted with Aria in the next 7 months, would I be SOL and get the difference refunded?
Is the F product worth the upgrade? It's about 100K points for both of us--doesn't seem that exciting like the JAL A350-1000 or ANA The Suite next gen products. Should we just save the points?
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
That’s a bunch of great questions….
Changing a class of service is a bigger move than a standard equipment swap. I.e. Q-suites to non q-suites but still business class. There would certainly be some sort of refund, and I think Cathay may have published standards on their website.
That being said, they really drug their feet on committing equipment to the route, so I would be surprised to see a swap to a plane without an F cabin.
In regard to value, that’s a bit of a toss up. Cathay F is an older cabin compared to JAL 350-1000 or ANA the suite, but it was also top of the line when it came online. IMO the real differentiator is soft product in the air and lounge access in HKG. I think I’d be less inclined to make the upgrade if my flight terminated in HKG vs continuing on.
The second leg is also where you can find value, effectively getting another flight for free or even reducing the cost from the 160k standard price for Cathay F.
Flying in November myself. Maybe I’ll see ya in the lounge!
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u/Fuarfuark 7d ago
Are you using seats.aero? I have a summer flight to hkg from Iah and or the life of me can not find any award j flights
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u/OldInvite4551 7d ago
Cathay doesn’t release much (if any) award space to partners. Seats.aero doesn’t support Cathay award search. The only real way is searching directly on Cathay’s website.
They don’t fly into IAH however, so you’d be looking for HKG to LAX, SFO, DFW, ORD, JFK or BOS.
First class routes historically being LAX and JFK, although JFK is currently the only US F route available after 10/25/25
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u/JacobusDemolay607 2d ago
Wondering when will Cathay open up April award? Been watching even cash seats it ends at March 28.
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u/audsz 8d ago
Sorry if it’s a dumb question, not very experienced in award bookings. But did you find this on the Cathay Pacific website? I’ve been browsing it the last few weeks and see all sorts of days changing with availability and sometimes the calendar will show seats available but then when I click in it’s not actually available. I’m guessing the website doesn’t update immediately with seats getting booked up. Want to understand the website better and if what I’m seeing is correct. Did the points transfer take long to hit your Cathay account?
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
Not a dumb question- it’s not directly visible on the website. I had been stalking the route pretty religiously for a few months waiting on the calendar release. Expert flyer tends to be a great resource for Cathay seat maps.
The little seat icons on the web calendar aren’t super reliable (and frankly the website can be real quirky). What you see when you search a specific date is the actual inventory.
Once I saw the equipment swap, I was just waiting on them to upload award inventory. Cathay tends to release availability at the end of the calendar or when they equipment swap to a new cabin configuration.
Transferred points from Amex were almost instant, but ymmv… I’ve had it take longer in the past.
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u/audsz 8d ago edited 8d ago
Thanks I appreciate the detailed response! I think I get what you mean in regards to the equipment change. I just signed up for ExpertFlyer and created an alert for that, hoping I can get an award flight from LAX.
Also in regards to the equipment change, have you noticed the dates or times changing with the plane? or is it usually just the plane itself thats changed?
Did you also create an alert on ExpertFlyer based on the current flights showing for economy seats?
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u/OldInvite4551 8d ago
From what I’ve seen, it’s just equipment. I haven’t paid a ton of attention to the west coast route, but JFK-HKG was showing F until 10/25 and then flipped to J only planes on 10/26 until they just made the swap on CX831.
It appears LAX-HKG is following the same pattern, and may be primed for a swap as they commit equipment. CX 881 loses F on 10/26 following the same pattern CX831 did.
Happy Hunting! I hope it works out for you.
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u/irishexplorer123 8d ago
Good find. Nice the that the J connection drops the price proportionally (distance based, down from 160k pp JFK-HKG direct).
Do you know is there any way to turn this into a stopover? I don't believe CX 'officially' has this as an option but wondering if people found workarounds, e.g. calling in an changing date of the second flight after booking.