upgrade on CX

http://qz.com/42938/why-airline-loya...credibly-hard/

"cry me a river"

I have very limited sympathy, if any, for this kind of whingeing. (Same as with the thread we had a couple weeks ago from a DM who claimed the new redemption chart is "gutting" AsiaMiles.)

The rules for upgrading are straightforward, and IME it says pretty clearly on the website whether you're buying an upgradeable fare. The TAs I've used have always either known that right away or been able to check pretty easily when I tell them I want to be able to upgrade. So I've never understood how people can then claim to be taken by surprise by the rules.

I do, however, think people are tending to lose sight of the point of a loyalty program. At the end of the day, they work best for truly frequent flyers. Someone who needs four or five years to rack up enough points for a reward of some sort probably is not traveling frequently enough for it to be worth worrying about a loyalty program. That infrequent traveler is better off booking by price each time s/he travels, no matter the carrier. While the carriers are obviously complicit in encouraging that traveler to play the loyalty game, it's his/her own fault as a consumer for getting taken in.

I had a discussion with my wife yesterday. She pointed out that I get around $10000 USD worth of free travel a year for her based on my flying. I would say thats not a bad programme.

As someone whose paid travel is exclusively in Economy & Premium Economy, I agree with the sentiment of the OP, but not really the conclusion.

For upgrades, AM are basically worthless, as you have to spend too much money on higher fare to make it usable.

For full redemptions, AM is decent. I am a Gold member so I get around 60-75K miles per year from flying, plus more from CC spending.

In the last few months I've redeemed an F trip HKG-SIN-HKG and another F trip to North America and back. If I put a dollar value on the same paid flights, it's probably around HK$100,000. I don't think I even spend HK$100,000 per year on CX cumulatively.

From that perspective, I'd say the programme is acceptable, provided that you work on the assumption that upgrades are poor value and the way to get best bang for buck is F & J full redemptions.

With CX don't you still have to pay the fuel surcharge? It seems like that would be a fairly big fee, at least comparable with the higher fare for upgradeable tickets. Or maybe I am mistaken because I've never actually redeemed a full ticket with AM.

I just checked the transpac I usually fly and the upgradeable economy fare is $300 more than the mileage-earning economy fare. That doesn't seem so bad for long haul.

I tend to think upgrades are the best use of AM for a number of reasons... You still earn elite miles, which is good for anyone who is borderline between elite levels. Upgrade availability seems pretty good, as 100% of my upgrade requests have been granted, although they always wait list me until a few days before the flight. Also, capacity-controlled full ticket award availability kind of hinders the value of those for me.

With CX you pretty much pay for all of your elite benefits, one way or the other. IMHO that works out pretty well for elites who can afford it.

I remember reading the TG ROP redemption chart and thinking to myself, well AM is really not bad at all.

Yes, this is one of the reasons I said the best value is full redemptions for F & J specifically. Full redemptions for Y are poor value due to the high fuel surcharge.

Now that Y to J upgrades are no longer possible on long haul, paying additional cash + miles to get from Y to W is not ideal, even if it's only US$300 more.

From W to J upgrade the fare difference between R and E fares is quite huge.

Yeah this makes sense now. The strategy is also a bit different if most of your paid travel is Y as opposed to Y+ or J. Previously I was paying for J all the time, so it feels like I'm saving a ton with E fares. The website doesn't make it easy to see R fares (yet?) so I dunno about those. If they suck really bad then I would consider switching to full ticket redemptions.

I think SQ, NH, JL, BA provide better redemption chart than CX Asiamiles. Though of coz, CX is not the worst, but definitely not the best in my opinion.

For some pax this is true, but not for all. For me, the upgrades have become a better value with the new chart.

Before, I was paying ~USD2000 for a K fare to/from JFK. With 80,000 miles (if you were lucky and could confirm both ways, which in practice never happened), you could get a J seat with a cash value of ~USD8500 (if you go based on discounted J) or ~USD11500 (full J). If you take the difference between the cash value of the J ticket and the K fare, those 80,000 miles were "buying" USD6500 or USD9500 worth of the J ticket, or a value per mile of 8 cents per mile/12 cents per mile based on whether you calculate from the discounted or full J value of the J seat. The miles were less valuable when you inevitably had to confirm two one-ways for a total mileage of 90,000. (I'm not counting taxes here to simplify things a bit.)

Now, I'd pay ~USD3200 for an R fare and use only 45,000 miles for the upgrade. Calculating in a similar manner, I end up with a value per mile of 12 cents (if you work from a discount J fare) to 18 cents (for a full J).

Assuming my math is right, the miles have become more valuable for the upgrades. BUT nothing in life is free. In exchange for giving us more value for the miles, CX requires us to shell out more cash. That will not be ideal for some pax, particularly the price-sensitive ones. But CX isn't necessarily interested in retaining price-sensitive pax through the loyalty scheme anyway. They can try to capture that pax via periodic sales like the fanfares when they need to fill planes on a particular route.

CX, in contrast to some North American carriers, appears to operate on the assumption that a loyalty program is only valuable to the airline if it encourages the loyalty of higher-revenue pax. I find that MPO is quite a valuable program in terms of the benefits they offer (lounge access, seat guarantee, etc). But they won't splash out like that on low-budget travelers.

If one compares the cash outflow to move up to J (using old vs. new rule), i would say yes as well. TA mentioned the difference between K and R is about US$1000 for flights to SE Asia ex-JFK.

I'm using AM the same way for my upcoming CNY trip. CX is currently running Y+ double miles promotion so instead of paying for J, earlier this month TA booked me in R (about US$300 more than E for ex-JFK flight) and then upgrade to J (which was cleared within a week).

FWIW:

1. George Clooney is a UA GS, not AA ConciergeKey

2. CX's program is not a bad program in some cases. Although it is known for its difficulty to redeem, your miles do not depreciate. Have you ever imagined to redeem a Y award with DL with about 200K miles for U.S.-HKG RT?

3. CX's program is not the only program that collect YQ/YR.

4. If you don't know the rule, ask before you do anything stupid.