My Father is an Invitation Member, formerly CX Lifetime Member. I believe he attained the CX Lifetime Member status by flying 2.0M miles in 10 years or something like that. In any case, that was before Asia Miles and The Club. It was back when it was called the Marco Polo Club. After the switch, CX gave him Invitation status vs. Lifetime Member. In any case, he doesn't even have to fly CX now to continue this membership status because he is a Lifetime Member. I believe the benefits are the same as Diamond Members except that Invitation Members get upgraded before Diamond Members.

Actually, I had thought that he always got upgraded from Y to J or J to F out of HK as long as they had a seat available in the next class of service as a courtesy to Invitation/Lifetime Members. I may be wrong but it seems that he gets this privilege all the time and even on flights that are not full in Y (when upgrading to J) and J (when upgrading to F).

Maybe someone from CX can enlighten us more on this point.

Hope that helps!!