I have a confirmed revenue booking in Business Class, and I wanted to upgrade one of the flights to First Class with Asia Miles.

I checked on the CX redemption website, and it showed that there was 1 First Class seat available for direct redemption.

However, when I called the Marco Polo hotline, the staff told me that I have to waitlist for the upgrade, while she also told me from her system, direct redemption was available.

Previously, I thought that as long as there are seats for redemption, you can redeem an upgrade reward.

Anyone knows how does upgrade redemption work? Is this situation normal? Or did they make any new changes to the redemption policy? Thanks!