Asia Miles

Asia Miles and its managing company, Cathay Pacific Loyalty Programmes Limited, was launched and founded on February 1999 in Hong Kong. The company was then renamed to Asia Miles Limited.[5]

In January 2015, 4.7 million miles and gifts worth HK$100,000 were stolen from 121 accounts, four persons were arrested. Stronger online security measures were introduced and affected accounts were reimbursed.[6]

In July 2019, Cathay Pacific took over low-cost carrier HK Express as a wholly owned subsidiary.[7] The airline joined Asia Miles while closing down their own frequent-flyer program reward-U. All reward-U points are converted to Asia Miles, with a one-off conversion rate of 8 reward-U points to 1 Asia Miles.[8]

In January 2020, Asia Miles changed their miles expiration rule from a time-based expiry system to activity-based system, where users can keep their miles by using the miles every 18 months.[9]

Although Cathay Pacific is one of the founding members of the Oneworld alliance, Asia Miles has partnered with multiple airlines outside the alliance.

As of February 2020, other than Cathay Pacific and its subsidiary airlines Cathay Dragon and HK Express, partnered airlines include:

Asia Miles has partnered with over 800 partners in dining, hotel, telecom, and retail sectors for earning and redeeming miles.

Co-branded credit cards are also launched since 2016 for earning miles. Asia Miles partnered with Standard Chartered for their first co-branded credit card in 2016 and American Express for the Hong Kong market.[10] Further partnerships with banks such as China CITIC Bank, Cathay United Bank, and BNU were made for co-branded credit cards in outside markets such as mainland China, Taiwan, and Macau.

Originally, Asia Miles were earned under a time-limited system, set to expire after three years. This was changed in January 2020 to an activity-based system where miles will remain valid as long they are either earned or redeemed at least once every 18 months.[9][11]