FREE flights to Hong Kong on a non-Crazy Rich Asians budget
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Crazy? Yes. Rich? Nope. Asians? Totally!
What do you do when you haven’t fully unpacked from a recent trip to Europe? Why bother? Travel again! Okay, well, that’s not what happened.
How exactly are we traveling again
Nancy and I just got back from our last-minute trip to Europe (Amsterdam and Barcelona). I booked that trip at the end of September, we got two free roundtrip tickets from LA, and we traveled in early October, and returned just two weeks ago. Here are some of the entries from that trip:
How we got 8 FREE nights in Barcelona
Get out of Barcelona, head to Girona, Spain
What to do during a layover in Amsterdam
Crazy Rich Asians? NOT!
Ok let’s go back to this trip to Asia, I actually booked this trip to Asia back in June. I saw a deal posted by one of my travel buddies, Spencer Howard (Straight to the Points). He’s one of my trusted travel enthusiasts. Spencer shared a flight deal from LA to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific. It was so tempting to book the deal. But I sat on it for a few days and didn’t do anything. I replied to Spencer’s post and told him, “This deal has been calling my name, Spencer! I need my dim sum and then some!”
A few days later, Spencer updated his post:
If you booked yesterday, you might want to cancel and rebook! Cathay dropped prices out of LAX and SFO to compete with Hong Kong Airlines. Here’s what we’re looking at now:
SFO-HKG on HKA: $346.91 or 23,127 UR points
SFO-HKG on CX: $347.11 or 23,140 UR points
LAX-HKG on CX: #387.11 or 25,807 UR points
That was my wake-up call. I just decided to pull the trigger. What the heck! I couldn’t say no to this deal anymore. Cathay Pacific’s been swirling around with this deal. Dangling the deal like a low-hanging fruit. How did I book it? I just booked it directly using my Ultimate Reward points using my Chase Sapphire Reserve account. I didn’t have to do any kind of points-transfer. I used the Chase Portal and booked directly with Chase. It was easy! Thank you, Spencer. Feel free to sign-up for Spencer’s travel deal alerts. Click here for more info.
Here’s the breakdown
- Two round trip tickets via Cathay Pacific LA to Hong Kong
- Cash price = $387 per person x 2 tickets = $774
- 25.8K Ultimate Rewards per person
- 51.6K Total for me and my wife
- Nonstop/Coach
- Flying via Cathay Pacific – ranked #6 – 2018 Best Airlines in the World
But Jason, that’s over 51,000 points. How the heck do I earn that? Do I have to fly to earn all those points? I don’t fly that much!
How to earn 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards
Okay, time for a quick tutorial. One of the things that I’m always asked is how exactly does one earn points for travel. Using the above example where I used 51,600 points to Hong Kong. To those who are just starting out, you could start by signing up for a Chase Sapphire Preferred or a Chase Sapphire Reserve. Both cards will earn you a sign up bonus (this could change, it was 50K before for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, but now it’s 60K, Click here for latest offer Chase Sapphire Preferred) after you meet the minimum spend requirement within the first three months. I wrote a detailed entry on how to get started with earning points to travel for nearly free (click here). Both of the Chase Sapphire cards were discussed in detail, and I listed the key benefits of using one over the other.
Applying for credit cards and earning sign-up bonus miles and/or points have been my gateway to my worldly travels. We have quite a few credit cards in the family and here are the cards that have allowed us to travel the world for nearly free (click here).
Back to Asia
It was just over a year ago when Nancy and I flew to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur via Japan Airlines. We’ve traveled quite a bit since, and this is our first trip back to Asia since that trip in 2017.
I’ve never been to Hong Kong. Okay, that’s not at all true. Well, I have been, but I was just inside the airport waiting for my connecting flight to Manila. So I couldn’t really count that as being in Hong Kong.
So there! That’s how we booked our trip to Hong Kong. Tune in for more details of our adventures. Follow me on: