I took a flight between LHR and HKG on Christmas Eve last year with a collegue. When checking in at LHR, I was told that we were two of four passengers in Business Class. I have never seen an emptier lounge at Heathrow. There was not a single passenger in First Class.

Upon boarding, I was horrified to learn that the economy class had been overbooked and ground agents had upgraded over 30 passengers. Most of them were seated in the upper deck. You know the type who gets upgraded - they're pulling out the leg rests and reclining the seats while the airfract is still on the ground, the 'holiday' types. Anyway, I made a formal complaint to the chief purser and asked her to at least move all the full fare paying passengers or Marco Polo members to the First Class cabin. There were no First Class catering, but at least the full fare passengers would be accorded some comfort. No deal. Purser passed the responsibility to ground agents. Ground agents said that if I wanted to sit in First, sure...pay the diff. That was not my point.

Anyway, I wrote to CX. A few months later they replied, explained the situation in full filghts etc but stopped short of an outright admission that that many passengers had been upgraded. Their compensation? One oneway upgrade certificate to be used on a standby basis.

This was the start of stupid CX politics that I realised that it was not worth the effort in arguing. I vowed to stop flying on them until this oneWorld thing came about.

HKFlyer - were you and your fiancee on the same or different PNRs? CX should in theory upgrade the both of you if the economy cabin is oversold. I see what you mean about their policies. Writing letters wouldn't help either.