All

Having a tough time finding the best upgrade strategy.

I am travelling with the GF to Thailand for about 10 days in May and want to ensure the long haul of the flight is as comfortable as possible (JFK - HKG, but more importantly HKG - JFK, if we had to pick only 1 leg).

Here is the itinerary:

CX 845 - JFK-HKG - Class M
CX 755 - HKG-BKK - Class M

Return:
CX 702 - BKK-HKG - Class M
CX 888 - HKG-JFK (via YVR) - Class M

I have 170K MR points and looking to upgrade us to Business class (at least 1 leg). The flights were booked on Cathay's website.

I recently heard that I cannot upgrade to business on CX888 because there is another middle tier? Is this true?

Additionally, do I have to transfer miles to Asia Miles? or could I transfer to Avios (eventhough the ticket was booked on Cathay's website)?

Do you have any advice on the best way to spend these MR points to ensure a comfortable flight?

Have not done this before so any help would really be appreciated.

Regards,
Mit

Welcome to Flyertalk. I have moved your question to the Cathay Pacific Asia Miles forum because you have already purchased the airline tickets. In general it is better to work out the upgrade strategy before purchase. If your American Express account includes a Platinum, Gold or Green card issued in the USA you will be able to transfer Membership Rewards points to Asia Miles here:

http://www.membershiprewards.com/cat...readcrumb=true

...but DO NOT TRANSFER until the knowledgeable members here in the Asia Miles forum have helped you understand how the Cathay Pacific upgrade for miles feature works.

I would begin reading here:

https://www.asiamiles.com/am/en/redeem/charts

Long story short, M class can only upgrade to premium economy. Period. All flights to/from JFK have premium economy so you're just not going to be able to upgrade to business, unfortunately.

Welcome to FT.

Yes - Premium Economy (or PEY). Except for 1 daily SFO-HKG, all NA flights are retrofitted with PEY.

You need to do AM. The issue is AM Upgrade award is not cleared until some times before departure. So it is possible that you transferred for nothing.

Give it to me (j/k)

In your case - I will say it may be best you spend money to get extra legroom seats rather than upgrade. It is something you can sure that you can get (upon payment).

Others have definitely answered your "hard" questions accurately so here's my attempt to answer the "soft" question...

The best way to use MR points to ensure a comfortable flight is go ahead and try to upgrade from Economy to Premium Economy. Yes, you will need to juggle some points, and if you don't get the upgrade they probably won't let you transfer the points back. But on the up side, PE on CX is a big step up from regular economy. I would compare it with domestic first class in the US. Wider seat, better recline, more legroom. It counts for quite a bit on a long flight like that. Here's a review of CX PE on JFK-HKG you might want to read.

Just my $0.02. Enjoy your trip

Thanks for your responses all,

Looks like I will try my luck with PE (after doing some research on availability on my travel dates)...fingers crossed.

Additionally, I've heard that the PE entertainment system is not as updated as the Economy system? Is the only difference that it's not touchscreen, or are there other features that would not be available?

If anyone has flown both and can comment, I'd really appreciate it.

From my experience, the entertainment system is the same J, PE, and Y(in terms of movies loaded on)

PE has (bigger) touchscreen - it is J that doesn't have touchscreen. Content is the same.

I thought the PE PTV was like a big version of the old Y (fixed shell) TV. So although it's bigger, the new Y PTV is clearer and IMO of better quality. Other than that, the content should be exactly the same.

I feel the bigger PEY screens are an upgrade to the previous economy ones and better than the current economy one, though the touchscreen is a bit confusing.

the system for all intents and purposes is the same in F, J, PEY and Y. There are small differences with the controllers and the F/J screen sizes are bigger (but not touch screen, as alluded to earlier), and there may be a very small difference between the screen in PEY and Y on some aircraft configs, but long story short is the system is great, and besides the small input differences and screen sizes it is identical across all classes. It is a really great way to kill time. I think it's the best system out there, it's a huge plus for CX and I think it's a major reason Y pax should choose Cathay over competitors