Originally Posted by
linx823
No matter how ridiculous it is, the Y fares are based on O class and J fares on I, so the seats are really really limited. And the catch here is.. it must be travel in a small group of more than 2 pax in a PNR, or if you are traveling with an senior citizen. Also, the deeeeeeep discounted Y fare comes with much restriction, like MAX 7 or 14 Days stay and change penalties. So if you are thinking of using it for miles or travel with flexibility, it is really hard.
But I'm pretty sure you can regularly get rough US$300 round-trips SIN-HKG? I think if you're moderately flexible you can usually find those types of fares, and I don't think they're the super discount ones either. To me even those don't sound like they scream profit for CX.
On a separate note, I also can't imagine it's overly profitable for CX to run to SIN as part of a hub and spoke operation for mainland China and TPE flights, because they usually would have to undercut direct competition (SQ, Jet etc to TPE, SQ+mainland airlines to China) in order to make you waste time to go through HKG and since the more profitable business travelers are, even if flying in Y, still probably going non-stop to wherever their destination is. So they limit themselves really to just the HKG-SIN business segment with just heaps of capacity between CX, SQ and UA (who also flies it). To make things worse a good part of the business segment had to be financial-services...
My un-scientific view on the Singapore route, frequently both in J and in Y, is that J often is filled with op-ups from Y, and Y to/from SIN tends to have much fewer business travelers than Y on mainland China flights (like PEK and PVG).