Request to purchase upgrade declined
 

Hi,

I bought a restricted economy ticket, and decided on the day of departure to enquiry as to the cost of paying to upgrade. I was told I cannot since the ticket is heavily discounted.

I can understand. Or being able to refund, or make changes, but turning down money? I dont get it.

Surely anybody offering to PAY to change to a higher class should be welcomed with open arms?

Maybe business class was full? In the few times I've paid for upgrades at the airport, I've never had a problem. You just pay the (full) fare difference. What trips some pax up is that those pax are looking for a special deal, aka a flat, cheaper (than the fare difference) price to upgrade to J or F, which generally is not something that CX does.

Thanks for the message.

That would make sense, but she said no change due to ticket. Maybe that's just her line instead of going into flight full or whatever.

Never mind.

Typically, if you want to "upgrade" a ticket from economy to business class, you need to pay the fare difference. This means that your original ticket is cancelled, you take the proceeds from that ticket and apply it to a new Business class ticket.

If your original economy ticket was a heavily discounted ticket, it probably wasn't refundable. In which case your "upgrade" cost would be the full business class fare, as cancelling your economy ticket would net you a zero refund.

So since your question is implying that you want to get a business class seat for less than the price of a new ticket, then her answer is correct - you can't upgrade your ticket since you won't be able to refund your existing ticket.

Technically speaking, can you firstly upgrade the heavily discounted Y tickets (e.g. N/Q/V/L/M) to more flexile Y ticket (e.g. K/H/Y) and use your point to upgrade it to J? (Just out of curiosity - cos never think of the reasons that you explained, good thoughts!!)

Same would happen - you would be refunding your original ticket and buying a ticket in the higher subclass.

Well, technically they would have accepted your money, but the upgrade price would have been equal to the price of buying a completely new ticket as your economy class ticket had no refundable value.

So, it's not that they were not willing to accept your money, it's just that you were not willing to pay the price.

So what were you expecting to pay for this 'upgrade' ? You do know that CX does not offer 'discounted' upgrades at the airport?

Would you have taken the upgrade if the fare was around GBP 2000 one way?

No, I wouldn't have spent 2k GBP for the upgrade.

However, the choice was never the issue since I wasn't told.

Happened to me too at business class lounge in HKIA.

I had just won some money in Macau and went with my V class ticket and asked how much to pay for business. The lady rudely told me I can't because of the class of the ticket. Rather than piss anyone of I said okay thanks and enjoyed the rest of my trip.

Seriously thinking I'll begin to fly entires as Cathays Service is beginning to piss me off.

This is a standard revenue management strategy.
General goal is to sell every seat for the highest price. In order to do this you create different price points with different limitations with the idea being that the limitations will prevent people willing to pay the higher price trading down to the lower price.
In your case the thought process is that, as somebody with the ability to pay money to upgrade to a higher class, you will in the future buy a higher upgradeable fare so that you can upgrade if you want to, and CX will make more money off you just on the economy ticket, irrespective of if you pay to upgrade or not.
So they may have lost out on the revenue by not selling you the upgrade this time but if they look at all purchase decisions by all paying passengers who buy higher upgradeable fares rather than the lower priced non-upgradeable they make more money.

CX turns down cash upgrades before. When I was in HKIA several years ago, I saw a family of four being turned down because the agent could not figure out the fare basis of the original tickets. The agent was trying to explain to them the entire time I was at the check-in counter. In their case, I think the tickets were AA codeshare.

Perhaps the same applies for group or packaged tickets.

I fly paid F or J usually in A or I since the penalties are minimal vs. the fare difference so I am guaranteed to fly in F or J as the case may be.

I am always amazed to see in various forums AC, AA are not a lot different at many times) the sense of entitlement and the outrage that follows when someone who didn't pay for higher classes of service, wants that class as an expectation.

If you won so much then cancel the V and buy a J ticket and you're in J, pretty simple. You did not pay for business class so why the big shock and anger at ""Cathays [sic] Service" when you paid for coach and got coach?

That is pretty standard on every airline I have flown here in the US. You can't even use miles to upgrade on the heavily discounted fares as well.

It is understandable that miles cannot be used for upgrading in many cases, but I believe OP was amazed that even cash cannot be accepted.