Cathay Pacific is a Hong Kong-based member of oneworld with a mind-blowing First Class and a top-notch business class.

Cathay Pacific flies from six North American cities to Hong Kong (and from there to the rest of the world), plus Boston to Hong Kong starts in May 2015.

Cathay Pacific flies 777s between the United States and Hong Kong, which have only six First Class seats.

This is the fifth installment of a round-the-world trip report that started here. We pick up in Hong Kong.

In late February, I flew into Hong Kong International Airport for a 23 hour layover that I spent in Macau. (Don't worry, I'm going to Hong Kong proper in a few weeks!)

I flew into Hong Kong in Cathay Pacific First Class and out of Hong Kong the next day in Cathay Pacific Business Class.

I haven't been home since February 16 when I boarded a plane from Honolulu for Newark.

This review is a continuation of my fun US Airways redemption that I wrote about back in this post. I reviewed Turkish Business Class: Washington DC to Istanbul already and had a similar (great) experience on my flight from Istanbul to Tokyo also in Turkish Business, so I am skipping to the next segment in Cathay Pacific Business Class.

I was in Tokyo, and I wanted to add a quick side trip onto my main award, and Hong Kong seemed like the logical spot.

Cathay Pacific has initiated four-times-weekly flights from Hong Kong to the Maldives with an A330 aircraft with fully flat business class (but no first class.)

The route opens up an exciting ultra-luxury way for Americans to get to the Maldives with a combination of American Airlines miles and British Airways Avios on Cathay Pacific flights.

What's the optimal use of your miles on these flights?

Cathay Pacific is a Hong Kong-based member of the oneworld alliance, which flies to the US with what many people consider to be the world's best

A few weeks ago, I shared my thoughts on The Coolest Thing You Can Do with 57.5k United Miles and 10k Avios, which arose from daydreaming about booking myself more award trips.

The last few days I've worked myself into a frenzy planning an incredible-value American Airlines Explorer Award around the world in business class for 130k American Airlines miles and the most opulent Explorer Award possible for 280k miles.

American Airlines Explorer Awards have a distance-based award chart that uses American Airlines miles to fly two or more of American's oneworld partners.

Using qantas.com for award searches can help you get maximum value from your American Airlines miles. American partners with the oneworld alliance and several non-oneworld partners.

This is a guest post from Chase Tajima. Chase is a tax attorney in Honolulu--Aloha! He writes about Hawaii tax law at TheTaxTable.wordpress.com. Anyone is welcome to submit a guest Anatomy of an Award post, so we can all learn from interesting award bookings.

I started following MileValue because I wanted to find a cost effective way to get from Honolulu to Delhi, India to attend my college roommate's wedding. Roundtrip flights from from Honolulu to Delhi ranged from about $1,600 to $2,000+ in economy.