1 Cathay Asia mile is worth ₹1.00 in India.
₹1.00₹1,000 per 1,000 miles, our house mark
held at ₹1.00 · re-marked 10 Jul
How we got this ₹ figure
₹1.00 is our HOUSE value for a mile — what a disciplined traveller actually clears, not the best redemption we have ever seen (₹1.80, the ceiling) and not the worst you can always fall back on (₹0.45, the floor). It is the number every route on this page is priced with.
The mark has 2 dated points in data/valuation-history.yaml, each one pinned to a quantified event in the tracker — no interpolation. The last move was re-marked 10 Jul. How we value a point →
Which of my cards reach it? — 56 do
56 more cards feed it by transfer, ranked by what one of ITS points actually becomes here — per-card exceptions and card-specific whitelists already applied, no averages.
Axis Olympus₹2.001:2 via Axis EDGE MilesSBI Card MILES PRIME₹1.001:1 via SBI Travel CreditsSBI Card MILES ELITE₹1.001:1 via SBI Travel Credits53 more cards that get you there — same ranking, best conversion first
The full funnel — ratios, chains and ₹/mile, side by side →
Shopping by bank instead? Axis Bank → · SBI Card → · HDFC Bank → · Kotak Mahindra Bank →
also known as: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles · Cathay Pacific Cathay
oneworld via HKG — Cathay business to Hong Kong and Japan is the play. TPG holds 1.3¢; we hold the ₹1/mile anchor.
cheapest way in — what one mile costs to mint
To Marriott Bonvoy₹0.332:1best way out — what one mile is worth once it lands , at the base rate before any volume bonus
Cathay Asia Miles gets cut — we grade its nerf risk high 4 cuts in 24 months — latest: Sep-2026 partner purge (major) How we grade it →
Expiry: activity-based — any earn or redeem every 18 months keeps the balance alive
What these points actually fly
Cathay Asia Miles prices 139 of the 2,450 corridors on our board against a published chart. The cheapest verified seat in each cabin:
- Delhi → Hong Kong Economy 13,000 pts the play
- Mumbai → Hong Kong Business 33,000 pts the play
- Hong Kong → London First 125,000 pts
Cheapest way in — Amex Membership Rewards at 2:1: Amex Green Corporate Card · Amex Gold Corporate Card · Amex Platinum Corporate Card · Amex Platinum Travel · Amex Platinum Charge · Amex Membership Rewards Card · Amex Platinum Reserve · Amex SmartEarn · Amex Gold Charge · Air India American Express Gold · Air India American Express Credit Card · Amex Gold Credit Cardyours
This drawing wants a wide screen. Every route it draws is in the lists below, priced.
Every way in
Currencies that transfer in
Ratios read source points : Cathay Asia Miles, cheapest mint first — the ₹ figure is what one mile here costs you via that route.
Every way in (via a chain)
Chains (2–4 legs) that survive our honesty filter — shown only where no direct route exists or the chain strictly beats it. End-to-end ratio in card points per mile of Cathay Asia Miles; priced at this program's house value.
Every way out
Ranked by real ₹ per point at our house values — the play first, the traps last. Ratios read Cathay Asia Miles : partner miles.
Ways out via partner transfer
Program-to-program corridors — Cathay Asia Miles moved onward without a bank card in the loop. Priced at the destination's house ₹/point (volume bonuses at the marginal block rate); destinations we refuse to fake a ₹ number for say so.
Redeeming Cathay Asia Miles
What the programme itself publishes — not what a booking engine quoted somebody once. Where it publishes nothing, this says so.
- Cash on top of the miles Carrier surcharge added
Cathay states outright that the miles on an Asia Miles award do not cover the fuel surcharge — and it is one of the very few programmes anywhere that publishes the amount. From India the band is "South Asian Sub-Continent" and it rose to USD 81.20 per sector on 01 August 2026, from USD 57.43. Per sector, per journey origin, the same whatever cabin you fly. The table is revised every fortnight and covers Cathay-operated flights only; an Asia Miles award on a partner carries that partner's own charge, which Cathay does not publish.
“From Cathay's Asia Miles award page: "Award tickets are subject to availability, terms and conditions apply. Required Asia Miles do not include fuel surcharges, taxes, surcharges or other fees." And from the fuel-surcharge page cited here: "A fuel surcharge is included on all Cathay Pacific tickets. The surcharge is on a per flight sector basis irrespective of fare type. It is included in the fare quoted on all our direct channels. The applicable fuel surcharge is determined based on where your journey begins." — the South Asian Sub-Continent band reads "From 01Aug2026 USD 81.20".”
cathaypacific.com · read
What a mile has been worth
Derived only from quantified, dated events in the tracker — no interpolation, no vibes.
- 10 Jul 2026 ₹1.00 current house value
- 1 Mar 2015 ₹1.00 tracker coverage start — no recorded movement while indexed — flat at the current house value; see currencies.yaml source
The nerf log
Full tracker →Every tracked event that touches Cathay Asia Miles.
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 10 Sept 2026Amex guts Platinum Travel's milestone ladder — 30,000 MR out, the Taj voucher doubledThree rungs in a Cardmembership year: 7,500 MR at ₹1.9 lakh, 10,000 MR at ₹4 lakh, 22,500 MR plus a ₹10,000 Taj Experiences e-Gift Card at ₹7 lakh — 40,000 bonus MR and ₹10,000 of Taj for the full run → The ₹1.9 lakh rung is deleted, ₹4 lakh keeps its 10,000 MR, and ₹7 lakh pays a ₹20,000 Taj Experiences e-Gift Card with its 22,500 MR removed — 10,000 bonus MR and ₹20,000 of Taj for the full run. Spend POSTED on or before 9 Sept 2026 is judged under the old ladder, posted from 10 Sept 2026 under the new one
Second cut in six months on the same ladder, and this one takes the entry rung out entirely. At our ₹0.50 house value for Membership Rewards the full ₹7 lakh run goes from ₹30,000 of milestone value (40,000 MR plus a ₹10,000 Taj card) to ₹25,000 (10,000 MR plus a ₹20,000 Taj card) — a ₹5,000 hole in a card whose fee is ₹5,000. The ₹1.9 lakh spender fares worse in proportion: their only milestone was 7,500 MR, worth ₹3,750, and it is simply gone, so the first ₹4 lakh of the year now buys nothing at all on a card sold on milestones. A ₹4 lakh spender is out the same ₹3,750. And the swap at the top is not like-for-like even where the rupees agree: the 30,000 Membership Rewards points being withdrawn are 15,000 miles into KrisFlyer, Qatar or BA Avios, Cathay, Emirates or Virgin Atlantic at Amex India's standard 2:1, or 30,000 Marriott Bonvoy points through the one 1:1 door — the ₹10,000 of extra Taj credit replacing them spends inside a single hotel group. Amex has announced this to cardmembers and published it nowhere: its own product page and the Platinum Travel general terms PDF (last modified 1 June 2026) both still print the March-2026 ladder at this read. The change comes from four independent community accounts that agree rung for rung, plus LiveFromALounge's write-up of the cardmember notice. The card has been closed to new applicants since March 2025, so every rupee of this lands on existing cardmembers.
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programmeSBI Card Travel Credits transferred 1:1 into Etihad Guest, one of eighteen airline partners in §3 of the MILES rewards T&C. At the ₹1/partner-mile anchor that was a full-value exit, and it was the only route left after the two Etihad Guest SBI co-brands were retired. → No Etihad route at all. The MILES rewards T&C now lists seventeen airline partners and Etihad is not one of them — the word does not appear anywhere in the seven-page document. Every other SBI partner survives at the same ratio.
SBI Card's own MILES rewards T&C, re-fetched on 22 August 2026 and carrying a 3 August 2026 ModDate inside the PDF, has one fewer airline in it than the edition this desk read on 2 August. The deletion is provable from the numbering rather than from absence alone: the table's first seven rows are unchanged (Air Canada 3, Air France-KLM 4, Air India 5, British Airways 6, Cathay 7), and every row from position eight onward has moved up exactly one — Thai from 14 to 13, Qantas from 17 to 16. Position eight was Etihad Airways / Etihad Guest / 1:1. All twenty-four other partners we carry, airline and hotel, are still there at the same ratios, so this is Etihad being dropped and not SBI narrowing transfers. The timing matters more than the ratio. SBI phased out the Etihad Guest SBI and Etihad Guest SBI Premier cards from December 2025 and reissued holders onto MILES products, and the transfer route was what made that migration survivable — a Premier holder who had spent six years earning Etihad miles could keep feeding the same account through Travel Credits. That is now closed, and India's remaining pipes into Etihad Guest run through BOBCARD's Etihad co-brands, not through SBI. If you hold SBI Travel Credits earmarked for an Abu Dhabi business seat, they are Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Avios or Maharaja points now. ON THE DATE: SBI publishes no notice and no cut-off. The date here is the day the desk read the change out of SBI's own document; the PDF's internal ModDate puts the edition at 3 August 2026, which is the earliest day we can prove, not an announcement.
- 26 Jul 2026Qantas suspends Sydney–Bengaluru, 8 August to 24 October 2026QF nonstop SYD–BLR, the only Australia nonstop from South India, priced on Qantas's distance-band chart → Suspended 8 Aug – 24 Oct 2026, resuming 25 Oct; through the window India–Australia awards route one-stop (Cathay via HKG, Singapore via SIN, or QF via SIN/DRW metal)
Bengaluru's only Australia nonstop stops flying on 8 August 2026 — but it is a dated SUSPENSION, not a cut: Qantas's own AgencyConnect network update says the service is "temporarily suspended from August and resuming at the end of October", and AeroRoutes puts the window at 08AUG26–24OCT26 with the A330 capacity redeployed to Perth–Rome and Sydney–Paris. Through the window every Classic Reward between South India and Australia prices as a one-stop over Hong Kong, Singapore or Colombo instead of the single-segment distance-band award. Verify travel dates: before 8 August and from 25 October the nonstop prices as before; in between, treat Cathay via HKG as the default oneworld routing.
- 25 Jul 2026HDFC switches on 22 transfer partners for BizPowerAirmiles conversion via NetBanking only — no partner ever named by HDFC → 22 SmartBuy transfer partners — 14 at 2:1, 8 at 3:1
HDFC's ₹2,500 business card just got a redemption game. BizPower Reward Points — 5 RP per ₹200 since 15 May 2026, 5X on income tax, GST, PayZapp bills, Google and Meta Ads — could previously only leave the account as cashback at ₹0.20, catalogue goods at ₹0.35, SmartBuy travel at ₹0.50, or a nameless 'Airmiles conversion' via NetBanking. From 25 July they transfer on SmartBuy to the same 22 airline and hotel programmes Infinia and Diners Black see, one notch worse across the board: 2:1 to KrisFlyer, Flying Blue, Avianca LifeMiles, Turkish, United, Accor ALL, IHG, Club ITC, AirAsia, Finnair, Radisson, Wyndham, Lotusmiles and SpiceClub; 3:1 to Qatar and BA Avios, Air India Maharaja Club, Marriott Bonvoy, Aeroplan, Cathay Asia Miles, Etihad Guest and Thai Royal Orchid Plus. HDFC announced nothing and still names no partner in any document it publishes — the grid comes from four independent sightings that agree partner-for-partner, and the 2:1 base matches HDFC's own FAQ line, '1 Reward Points = Rs.0.5 airmiles'. Accor ALL at 2:1 is the standout: at our ₹2.15 house value that is the only one of the 22 doors worth more than a rupee a point (₹1.07), and it beats every cash-out HDFC offers this card. Sister card BizBlack, on Infinia-grade earn, still reaches exactly one programme.
6 earlier events on this program
- 1 Jul 2026Atmos Rewards raises the partner-award booking fee 60% to $20US$12.50 per person, per direction, on every partner award booking → US$20 per person, per direction, for bookings made on or after 1 July 2026 (announced early June 2026 when Atmos updated its site)
Alaska's Atmos Rewards quietly raised its partner-award booking fee from $12.50 to $20 per person each way — a 60% jump on the surcharge that rides every Qatar, Cathay, JAL or Oman Air redemption our board prices through Atmos. It's still small money next to the miles (about ₹1,700 a head each way), and Atmos continues not to pass fuel surcharges on most partners, so the program's core India play — Gulf and one-stop long-haul on QR metal — survives intact. But it's the second fee Atmos has touched since the rebrand, and the direction of travel is the story: the old Alaska habit of being the cheap, generous outlier is being trimmed one line item at a time.
- 1 Oct 2023Cathay Pacific Asia Miles jacks up premium award pricesBusiness/First awards at pre-Oct-2023 Asia Miles rates → Same awards cost 20-40% more miles, some zones +33%
Cathay gave advance notice — rare generosity — before hiking Asia Miles award costs on October 1, 2023: premium-cabin redemptions rose 20-30% on average, with some distance zones spiking as much as 40% one-way. Economy stayed mostly untouched, so this was a direct shot at exactly the demographic that hoards Asia Miles for a business or first-class splurge. The silver lining: Cathay published a real award chart afterward instead of reverting to opaque pricing.
- 3 Aug 2021BA devalues Avios on Cathay Pacific and JAL short-haul awardsLower short-haul Avios pricing on Cathay/JAL partner awards → Higher regional redemption rates, no advance notice
British Airways quietly repriced short-haul Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines redemptions upward with zero warning, a move Live From A Lounge flagged specifically for its impact on Indian Avios holders routing through Hong Kong and Tokyo. It was an early tremor before BA's much bigger 2022 devaluations.
- 1 Feb 2015Citi PremierMiles doubles the cost of transferring to airline partners1:1 transfer to airline miles; 1 PM = ₹0.5 cash value → 2:1 transfer ratio; cash value cut 10% to ₹0.45
Effective February 1, 2015, Citibank halved the value of every PremierMile transferred to a partner airline — the ratio moved from 1:1 to 2:1, meaning cardholders now needed two PremierMiles to get one mile of British Airways, Cathay Pacific or other partner currency. Citi also quietly shaved 10% off cash redemptions in the same stroke. It remains one of the sharpest single-day devaluations any Indian travel card has pulled, and it permanently changed how PremierMiles was valued relative to a straight cashback card.
- 24 Feb 2010Kingfisher signs MOU to join oneworld allianceIndia's most premium airline outside any global alliance → MOU signed, targeting alliance entry within ~18 months
On 24 February 2010, Kingfisher Airlines signed a memorandum of understanding with oneworld's member airlines, putting India on track for its first-ever global-alliance airline and dangling reciprocal miles/status across British Airways, Cathay Pacific and friends. The promise never survived Kingfisher's finances — but at the time it was the biggest loyalty-currency upgrade an Indian flyer could imagine.
- 1 Feb 1999Singapore Airlines launches KrisFlyer, its first own FFPSQ shared Passages; only premium cabins earned → All three cabins earn miles in KrisFlyer from 1 Feb 1999
Singapore Airlines launched KrisFlyer on 1 February 1999, replacing Passages — its odd joint programme with Cathay Pacific and Malaysia Airlines that only rewarded First and Business flyers. For the first time economy passengers earned SQ miles too. Two decades later KrisFlyer would become the single most coveted transfer target for Indian credit card points.
Straight answers
The questions people actually type about Cathay Asia Miles — answered from the same data as everything above, with the same numbers.
What is 1 Cathay Asia mile worth in INR?
Our desk marks Cathay Asia Miles at ₹1.00 a mile — so 1,000 miles are worth ₹1,000 and 10,000 are worth ₹10,000. That is the number every route on this page is priced with. The ₹0.45 floor is the redemption you can always fall back on; the ₹1.80 ceiling is the best sweet spot we have actually verified. The mark is holding flat, last reviewed 10 Jul 2026. The valuation index prices it against every other program we cover.
What is the Cathay Asia Miles transfer ratio?
Every ratio on this page is read source points : destination points and is never inverted. The cheapest way in on our board is 2:1 from Amex Membership Rewards — cheapest by what it costs in ₹ to mint a point, which is not always the fattest-looking ratio . We track 6 live routes in and none out, each listed above with what one point becomes, the cards that may ride it, and the per-card exceptions where an issuer gives some cardholders a different rate.
Which Indian cards earn Cathay Asia Miles?
None — no Indian card earns Cathay Asia Miles directly, so it is a transfer-only balance here. 56 cards feed it instead, and the hardest converters are Axis Olympus, SBI Card MILES PRIME and SBI Card MILES ELITE. The ratio you are offered is therefore the whole decision. The card list above names each of them with its rank, its ratio and what one of its points becomes here.
Can I transfer Axis Bank points to Cathay Asia Miles?
Yes — Axis Olympus earns Axis EDGE Miles and moves them here at 1:2, which makes one of its points 2.0 miles and ₹2.00 of value at our house mark. 56 cards feed Cathay Asia Miles; it is the best of them. Everything that bank's points can reach — caps by card tier included — is on its transfer page.
When did Cathay Asia Miles last devalue?
10 Sept 2026 — Amex guts Platinum Travel's milestone ladder — 30,000 MR out, the Taj voucher doubled. That is the newest cut on our record. The nerf log below carries 11 tracked events touching Cathay Asia Miles, and the program grades high on nerf risk.
Verified against Cathay Pacific's own documents on · our house ₹/mile, ₹1.00 today
Not published , and we will not invent it: how long posting takes.
Every document behind this page — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Cathay's award-chart feed — upgrade and companion bands, plus oneworld zones. The redemption chart is not in this file; the ₹1 anchor is not priced off the upgrade miles.
- community A full transcription of Cathay's 1 May 2026 Asia Miles charts — the Cathay-operated bands the board prices from, where India sits in the dearer Type 2 tier below 2,750 miles.
- official Cathay's own fuel-surcharge table — USD 81.20 per sector from the South Asian Sub-Continent since 1 August 2026, up from USD 57.43. That cash is payable on top of every Asia Miles award.