Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Holding Back Premium Seats?

I know CX wants to sell as many full fare seats as possible so I did feel fortunate when were able to get 3 Business Award seats on 12/31 from LAX to HKG on 881. However, I have tried to get First on either LAX flight, either YVR flight, or SFO for months. I am using AA points so I kept calling them. The flights never opened up, and now, within 24 hours of departure, they are quite open with still no award allocation.

I am curious if CX offers their Marco Polo members a different inventory for award seats in First than CX gives AA to offer its members?

I know CX members can waitlist so that is already one advantage their members receive in getting award seats on a flight.

yes, i believe there is difference in such inventory management, although the difference between MPO & AADV is small.
the mian difference is that MPO can talk to CX inventory management directly, but for AADV it is indirect conversation.

however, you should also note that the miles required are very different.
F class award for LAX-HKG round trip on Asiamile is 140k miles, and 180k for hkg-jfk.
while on AADV, 140k can take you mia-jfk-hkg-jnb!
worse still for CX MPO, they require a 14 day advance issuing of ticket. so your situation will never arise! (i havent heard of any expedite service like AA, although it is possible to shorten the 14 days to 10 days or so)

[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 12-31-2002).]

Yes, expedite services are possible with service charges outside HKG.

At HKG, the MPC desk can handle last-minute issues for no charges! The shortest notice I had was a award flight for a next day. Not sure if they can do a same-day flight.

The main advantage with Asiamiles/MPO is the ability to waitlist on award flights - not just on CX, but on all other oneworld partners in the ASIAMILES programme.

Your chances of seats clearing will be based on your MPO status.

Two suggestions having just done this

1. Call AA and have them call CX to try and plead your case to get seats

OR

2. Do what I did: I went to the CX ticket counter and they said no problem and moved me to the class I wanted...took a bit so plan accordingly but they said IF the seats were there they were glad to help out. Not sure if thisn is standard or just them being courteous.