Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Asia Miles Customer Service Issue

Hello,
I am new to the board, and hoping you can assist me.

My wife is traveling this week from JFK to HKG on a revenue biz class ticket. I thought it would be a nice surprise for her, and requested a Asia Miles upgrade to First using the round trip 105,000 mile award.

The flights that she was booked on were not available for mileage upgrade, and placed on waitlist. She is due to travel on Friday, and about a week ago, I checked the reservation and the outbound upgrade had cleared. The return had not.

I called Asia Miles and they told me that they would extend the ticketing deadline until the 27 July-- after her outbound flight. Problem is that Asia Miles has to reissue the ticket with the upgrade to first class on the outbound.

I was informed by one of the representatives that once the award ticket is ticketed, then the award is complete-- therefore a roundtrip award has to be done one one ticket for 105,000-- rather than each segment being upgraded and ticketed-- otherwise it would be 120,000... an additional 15,000 miles. This is confusing as different representatives have advised me of different things-- and I cannot get a straight answer. Therefore my strategy was to wait until 19 July (one day before her flight) to ticket-- in hopes of the "computer" confirming the upgrade (PS-- there are 3 revenue tickets for sale on the flight in First).

Today, I check and I see that someone went ahead and ticketed the outbound flight. Furiously, I called and spoke to someone who refused to transfer me to a supervisor. Eventually, she did, and the supervisor, apologized and told me he would investigate and call me back in two hours... he did not call me and I called Asia Miles again... once again I was apologized to and told nothing can be done. I recommended that why just not clear the upgrade or if they'd like to wait until 27 July -- to charge the additional 45,000 miles that would complete the 105,000 point redemption. I was told no, we can't do that-- sorry.

I am frustrated and upset, and do not know who I can further speak to. All US Speaking Asia Miles agents are in Manilla, and when calling ticketing in Hong Kong or USA, they refer me back to the toll-free US number in Manilla.

Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on who I can speak to or what I can do at this point?

I don't think that the call center agents in Manilla are not properly educated nor trained.

Many Thanks,
Konstantinos

Unfortunately you've run into a known issue, and one that causes a lot of frustration on FT. An award at the r/t mileage rate can only be issued if both the outbound and return are confirmed. Any Asia Miles agent who told you differently was misinformed.

It's possible what they meant is that they could issue the outbound award now and extend the ticketing deadline for the inbound award, especially if originally the deadline for both legs was the same day. If so, I can imagine how you might have misunderstood this, since I find they aren't always clear about how they communicate this sort of thing. I'd focus any complaint on this miscommunication issue, rather than trying to get them to bend their policy on r/t vs o/w award rates.

The bottom line is that the published roundtrip mileage rates more often than not (for me anyway) turn out to be fictions -- you should assume an award will cost 2x the o/w rate. This is especially true for those of us who tend to redeem upgrade rewards when we generally need to travel on the dates we've already ticketed.

Book your wife's return date on a day that the upgrade to F is available and confirm that to issue your roundtrip upgrade award. Then waitlist the date that you want and ask agent to put a priority waitlist as your preferred date.