Originally Posted by Fly Me To The Moon

During past CNY in Jan, I had booked HKG-YVR return in W class. Wanted to upgrade both sectors to J. When I requested the upgrade, both sectors had to be wait listed. A few weeks before the outbound flight, I hit Diamond (I was MPC Gold at the time I had made the booking), and the INBOUND flight cleared wait list a few days later. I called MPC to ticket the upgrade on the INBOUND flight, and was proactively told by the agent that he will keep me on waitlist for the outbound flight, and if that ends up clearing, then I could call back to MPC to request refund of 10,000 miles (i.e. would be ticketed as 2 x 20,000 one-way upgrades, and then a refund of 10,000 miles to effectively use 30,000 points for a round-trip upgrade).

The outbound flight did not clear prior to the deadline, but on the day of the flight, I requested an instant upgrade at the airport. I had to wait until quite close to the flight time, but eventually the instant upgrade cleared, and I was given a form to sign to confirm deduction of 20,000 miles.

After I came back to HKG from Vancouver, I called MPC to request the 10,000 miles refund, and it was processed and showed up within the hour in my MPC account as "Instant Upgrade Mileage Refund".