Hi! My name's Alvin, and I'm an aviation writer and enthusiast. I'm from Hong Kong, and I now work in the UK as a business developer and freelance travel consultant. After being away from family during my university days, I've learned a thing or two about miles and points.

Some of you may know me from The Alviator, a blog I've kept up for 12+ years. We've written 1,000+ posts revolving around travel reviews, insights, guides, and industry updates. Over the years, I've reviewed 150+ flights (or 650,000+ miles worth of flying), and helped redeem millions of miles for myself as well as people around me that I love.

While I'm still going to be writing on The Alviator, I'm excited to begin sharing tips, tricks, and advice on how HeyMax users can use their Max Miles. The aim is for you to be able not only to accumulate Max Miles, but also use them for exciting aspirational travel.

How did I get into aviation, and miles and points?

When I was younger, I had the privilege of tagging along family trips, where Cathay Pacific award space was wide open and we'd regularly see 4+ redeemable business class seats. Over time that changed, and award space was much less accessible over peak season. We also pretty much only earned Asia Miles and tried to use them during our school holidays, so as a family we began collecting a stash of miles that we didn't really have the opportunity to use.

From the times that I was able to fly business class as a kid, I started learning about air travel in premium cabins. I started really enjoying reading reviews that other bloggers would post on the internet, and also wanted to start writing reviews of my own. I started what was then known as "Hong Kong Airline News" (complete with a .wordpress.com URL, as I didn't want my parents to know why my grades suddenly plummeted and where all my time was going, and didn't have a credit card to pay for my own domain).

My 3 GB of free media ran out quite quickly and I didn't know how to circumvent that at the time, so I started a new site called Young Travelers of Hong Kong [sic], which has been going strong until now (we rebranded as The Alviator in 2024 to reflect the fact that I was getting older and also not living in Hong Kong).

Around this time, I started learning that different airlines have different rewards schemes, and publish award space on different dates. My dream was to have unlimited access to miles and points, so I could fly on any airline product I wanted "for free" (or so I thought at the time). I also remember when we spent a ghastly amount on an economy class longhaul ticket to New Zealand over Chinese New Year, which is when I properly decided that I wanted to tap into the miles and points world.

At this point I wasn't spending with a card yet, though over my teenage years, I made our whole family a frequent flyer account with every alliance, and obsessively tried to find the cheapest premium cabin deal I could find whenever award space wasn't available (this was before the time of Google Flights). While I made sure that we juiced out every single mile from every flight we took, I'm so grateful to my parents for continuing to bring us on wonderful family trips, and recognise that I wouldn't have been able to enjoy flying so much without them.

I got my first Hong Kong-based credit card at 18 and started booking flights to and from London in order to go to university (at Imperial College), and got my first UK-based credit card when I got my first job at 22. The rest is history.

My general philosophy when booking and/or redeeming air tickets

Over the past many years writing about air travel, I've learned a few things that I want to share with HeyMax users:

• Airline miles/hotel points are currency and redemptions aren't "free", so use your points wisely. Contrary to what I thought when I was younger, there are best ways to use miles, and they shouldn't be treated as "free" spend. For example, I would rarely ever spend my airline miles for anything other than air travel, as the value per mile will go down significantly. At the same time, this also means that you should also make the most of every mileage earning opportunity (whether you're flying or spending on a card), as you're otherwise saying no to free currency. On this HeyMax blog, I'll be writing about ways where you can maximise the value of your Max Miles.
• The informed traveller is the comfortable traveller. While you can be lucky and snag an awesome deal on a one-off basis, people who will travel most comfortably on average are those who have accumulated knowledge about airline cabin products, different airline alliances and redemption opportunities, how pricing works, as well as how airport operations work.
• Know the value of your travel. An SGD 700/HK$4,000 roundtrip flight in longhaul economy could be a great way to spend your money, especially if there isn't award space available. However, you do need to consider how long you'll take to recuperate if you don't sleep well on flights, etc.. If you're deciding to splurge on a premium cabin, know how much you'd be willing to spend on it, and don't forget to include the number of miles and points in your budget.

What I'll be writing about on HeyMax's blog

Essentially, my role at HeyMax is to help provide educational content that shows you how best to spend your Max Miles on travel:

• I'll showcase options for flights that you can redeem your Max Miles on, to give you insight on where you can stretch your miles
• I'll give some guidelines for some of HeyMax's tools and how you can use them effectively
• I'll also provide some travel tips and tricks, such as originating out of a different airport to take advantage of award space, and how to avoid paying hefty taxes and fees

Conclusion

I'm excited to meet all of you, and to share some of the knowledge I've accrued over the past 12+ years with you guys! If you have any specific questions or content ideas, feel free to email me at alvin@thealviator.com.

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