One of the most important things you want to do with miles and points is keep them from expiring.

It can be challenging to keep miles from expiring, especially as you start collecting a wide array of types of miles and points. I like to use AwardWallet to track my miles and points. The free version of AwardWallet tracks a limited number of expiration dates, but AwardWallet Plus tracks expiration for all of your accounts, and that is a feature I find valuable. Over the past year or so, many airline and hotel programs have paused or extended the expiration of miles and points, but I ran into a situation where my Cathay Pacific Asia Miles were expiring, so I thought I would share how I reinstated my expiring Cathay Pacific miles.

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles expiration policy

Typically, miles and points expire in one of four ways:

• They never expire (Delta Sky Miles as an example)
• They never expire if you have a credit card and/or elite status (IHG Rewards Club points)
• They expire after a certain amount of inactivity (usually 18 to 24 months)
• They expire a certain amount of time after they were earned (usually two to four years)

It is miles and points in this last group that are the most annoying because there is often no way to extend the expiration. If your miles and points expire after a certain amount of inactivity, you can often just transfer additional miles in or spend on a co-branded credit card.

Historically, Asia Miles expired after 3 years of inactivity, regardless of any activity. That meant that there was no good way to extend the expiration of your Asia Miles. Cathay Pacific changed their expiration policy back in December 2019. Now, Asia Miles will expire if you have no activity in an 18-month period. But any miles earned before January 1, 2020, still expire after 36 months, no matter if there is activity or not.

What can you do with Cathay Pacific Asia Miles?

Cathay Pacific is a member of the oneworld airline alliance, and you can use Asia Miles to fly on most oneworld partners.

(SEE ALSO: Introduction to air alliances)

We have written before about the 6 best uses of Asia Miles, including business class to Europe for 80k round-trip. Cathay Pacific has a bit of a unique award chart but there are definitely some places to get good value. I didn’t want to lose my Asia Miles, that’s for sure.

(SEE ALSO: Cathay Pacific 777-300ER Business Class Review: Hong Kong to San Francisco)

(SEE ALSO: Cathay Pacific 777 Premium Economy Review: Beijing to Hong Kong)

How to reinstate expiring Cathay Pacific Miles

I wrote about expiring Asia Miles a few months ago. Both my wife and I had signed up for the Cathay Pacific credit card awhile back and received the 50,000 bonus miles. Due to COVID and other factors, we had never gotten around to using the miles and they were subject to the 3 year expiration policy.

In the comments, someone pointed me to a Flyertalk thread where there was talk of an offer where Cathay Pacific will reinstate Asia Miles that expired if you earn 3,000 miles from two or more partners within 90 days. Since Cathay is a transfer partner of the following points currencies, I thought that wouldn’t be too hard:

• American Express Membership Rewards points
• Citi ThankYou points
• Capital One Venture miles
• Marriott Bonvoy points

My experience reinstating expiring Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

My miles were expiring in a few months, so I reached out to Cathay Pacific. They confirmed the miles reinstatement challenge and said that I should email back after they had expired. That made me a bit nervous since I had no idea if they would change or eliminate the challenge. But once my miles had expired, I emailed again and confirmed the challenge. Then I transferred over 1000 Membership Rewards and 2000 Marriott Bonvoy points. The miles were moved over to the “new” miles that expire in 18 months. A week or two later, I repeated the process with my wife’s account. Again, the process worked great.

Reading the Flyertalk thread, it seems that now there are reports that people are getting their miles reinstated by just asking via the live chat feature on the website.

Have you ever reinstated expiring Cathay Pacific Asia Miles? Let us know your experience in the comments.

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