How to claim missing Cathay Pacific Asia Miles after your flight

Earning Asia Miles when flying with Cathay Pacific and its partner airlines like Qantas is usually straightforward: attach your Asia Miles number to your booking before you travel and those miles tend to appear without much hassle.

But occasionally, the miles you’re owed never turn up, or you may forget that crucial step of attaching your frequent flyer number to your ticket – and that’s where submitting a claim for ‘missing miles’ becomes necessary.

Here’s how it’s done following flights with Cathay Pacific, Cathay Dragon and all other partner airlines.

(Qantas Frequent Flyer members hoping to claim missing Qantas Points from their flight – rather than Cathay Pacific Asia Miles – should instead follow these instructions.)

Claiming missing Asia Miles from Cathay Pacific, Qantas flights

If your journey was with Cathay Pacific, Cathay Dragon, Qantas, British Airways or Air New Zealand, begin by logging in to the Asia Miles website, hover over or tap ‘Your Account’ from the menu at the top, then click ‘Manage Your Miles’.

Scroll down until you see ‘Claim Missing Airline Miles’, and follow the link:

You’ll then spot a form in which you’ll need to enter the following details:

• Your flight number, such as CX162 or QF9
• Your origin and destination, like Sydney to Hong Kong or Melbourne to London
• The scheduled departure date of the flight you’re claiming
• Your cabin class: that’s first class, business class, premium economy or economy
• Your fare class: a single letter corresponding to the type of fare you purchased, usually found on your reservation confirmation or via airline ‘manage my booking’ tools. Examples include F and A for first class, J, C, D and I for business class, and so on.
• Your ticket number, if you have it: also normally found on your booking confirmation. This isn’t your flight number – rather, a long sequence of digits that’s unique to your booking. If you bought flights through Cathay Pacific, this number begins with 160 or 043, while for bookings made via Qantas, it starts with 081. The prefix varies for other airlines.

Then, click ‘submit’. If your claim is successful, any missing miles will be credited within eight weeks and will appear in your Asia Miles transaction history.

You can submit claims to Asia Miles for flights taken between seven days and six months ago – but as miles can take up to six weeks to land in your Asia Miles account, we’d suggest filing a claim around two months after you fly if those points still haven’t arrived.

If you joined the Asia Miles program after you flew and you haven’t already credited those points or miles to a different frequent flyer program, you can also claim to earn points on flights taken up to four weeks prior to the date you joined Asia Miles.

Claiming missing Asia Miles from Air China, Alaska Airlines, Gulf Air, Royal Brunei

To claim missing Asia Miles following a journey with Air China, Alaska Airlines, Gulf Air or Royal Brunei, you’ll instead need to download, print and complete a claim form, and then post it to Asia Miles HQ in Hong Kong at your own expense.

You can download that form here [PDF, 227kB] – and once filled out, it can be mailed to Asia Miles, PO Box 1024, Tsuen Wan Post Office, Hong Kong, along with a print-out of your reservation confirmation for the trip and your original boarding pass(es).

Just in case your claim gets lost in the mail, we’d also suggest taking a photograph or photocopy of your boarding passes before you mail them – or if you boarding pass was electronic such as in Apple Wallet, take a screenshot by clicking the home and power buttons simultaneously, and print that out to send through.

Asia Miles requests that you not submit claims for missing miles on these airlines until at least eight weeks have passed from your travel date.

Claiming missing Asia Miles from all other airlines

Claims for all other airlines follow similar procedures: you still must complete the claim form and submit your booking confirmation and boarding pass(es), but can do so via email or fax as well, rather than the mandatory snail mail approach for the partners above.

Emails can be sent to [email protected] with the subject ‘#CLAIM#’, without quotes but including those hash symbols. You can click on that email address to get started, and then attach the ‘magic three’ documents: the claim form, reservation confirmation and boarding passes before sending.

Faxes of the same can be sent to (+852) 2312 0883, and Australians may need to replace the ‘+’ symbol with ‘0011’ on numeric-only keypads, before dialling Hong Kong’s country code of ‘852’ and then the remainder of the number.

Again, these claims should only be submitted if you have already waited at least two months for your miles to appear, but no longer than six months after your journey was taken.

Remember, you can also earn extra Cathay Pacific Asia Miles from your everyday purchases by converting your Australian credit card points into Asia Miles.

Chris C.

Chris is a a former contributor to Executive Traveller.