Originally Posted by
kar don
My flight CX885 LAX to HKG upgrade was unavailable upon booking so they said to add to waitlist and once it opened up id be automatically confirmed. Other agents then said oh you should keep calling instead of waitlisting. So I waitlisted and kept checking EF and saw several J seats open. Called today to check and the agent said you are on waitlist and will be SMS notification when available. After I asked her to check other dates. She said oh actually your flight has upgrades available and processed the upgrade. What the heck? What is the point of a waitlist then?
are you sure it just wasn't people with higher elite status? CX has three levels of waiting list..."highest priority", "high priority" (sometimes just called "priority") and "normal priority" (sometimes just called "normal" or "standard" waitlist). Diamonds have highest priority, while Golds get high priority. I'm not sure about Silvers. But other OW status doesn't count, no matter what they tell you on the phone.
I'm not saying you're wrong, indeed many years ago I had the waitlist fail on me twice in short order. How did I know? Because I saw F seats I was waitlisting for on the British Airways website. But I haven't seen this situation in years. And I think it would be hard to figure out unless you were on the highest priority waiting list.