Hi guys,

Apparently my wife has a childhood friend that works for Cathay, and my wife said she didn't want to tell me earlier because she fear I would abuse her friendship (you got that right!) Anyway, met her in a wedding banquet here in the States while she's on vocation and attending the same wedding for their common childhood friend.

Of course knowing me I'm especially interested in what really happened at op-up situations, and this is what she told me:

1) If the flight is overbooked at least 48 hours in advance then the automatic op-up procedure is enforced (what we already got in the FAQ section.)

2) Here is the surprise, however, if the overbooking happened during the day of the flight (last minute changes by some pax, last minute bookings), it is totally up to the supervisor in charge who he/she would op-up. Sometimes they go by status, and sometimes NOT!

3) Her tip is to check in less than 2 hours before flight. Those are the times when the Y cabin is just about fully assigned and the supervisor is playing with op-ups with empty J-F cabins for future Y pax check-ins. Again, some supervisors will op-up based on status (i.e. move a DM who's already checked-in from Y to J, and then check-in the new Y pax), but many times, for the sake of easiness and time, the supervisor will just op-up the reminding unchecked Y pax based on their status alone.

So here's the situation, say Y only has 5 seats left and they are expecting 8 more registered pax. The supervisor will just scan the remaining 8, and op-up based on the status of those remaining 8 alone. If there are 1 DM, 1 GO, 2 SL, and 4 no status then the DM, GO, and 1 SL would be op-up. There could already be 8 DMs who arrived earlier checked-in at the gate with Y tickets, and they will remain in Y.

She said this is why some people are "downgraded" back to Y from op-up. Say the remaining 8 only 7 show and there's one extra Y seat left, then the supervisor would downgrade the op-up (in this case the SL)

Other times if you have a lazy supervisor, they would just tell the agents to op-up whoever shows in the last minute, regardless of status (so in some cases being last does pay.) So at the end it's completely based on the working habits of the supervisor. Though she did say most supervisors do try to honor the status as much as possible, but there are times speed counts and that's when the situation is more freelance.

In summary, if you are high status you need to hope that the plane is overbooked in advance. Otherwise, last minute overbooking is free game, and this is why sometimes you hear GR or even non-status people get op-up while the plane has many premium pax.

Finally, no she isn't high enough in the food-chain to add the note "VIP" next to my name.