Chase British Airways Card

British Airways is once again back with their 100,000 Avios point bonus although slightly less lucrative this year due to the heavy spend requirement. Additionally, due to the revaluation of the new BA Avios miles, this deal is not as good as last year particularly if you don't live in a Oneworld hub city or you tend to fly long distances (as their new award charts are more based on distance).

At the current redemption chart rates and assuming you can accomplish the $20k spend, you can still get 2 roundtrip tickets from the continental US to London for 50k Avios each.  Flights with partners though can get pretty pricey as the distance begins to go up.

Cathay Pacific Economy (SFO - HKG - ICN)

Back in May, I had applied for a Chase British Airways Visa card with a 100k point bonus and was lucky enough to be able to use some of the points for my trip to Seoul in September.  Based on the British Airways partner chart at the time (ie. before the transition over to their new 'Adios' points), I was able to snag an 'almost' free flight from San Francisco to Seoul for just 50k points, passing through Hong Kong both outbound and inbound.  This Oneworld award redemption was awesome as flights to Asia on almost all airline alliances require 65k - 75k points for a US-Asia flight, not to mention that this was on Cathay Pacific, one of the few Skytrax-rated 5-star airlines in the world.

As this was my first time flying Cathay, I was pleasantly surprised soon after boarding to receive a menu for the trans-Pacific flight: