OW Emerald and MPC DM - which to use and when?
 

Hi all,

I'm flying JFK to HKG in J in Monday and I'd like to post the miles to my AA EXP account. I'm also MPC DM so I'd ideally like to use that for any op-up's that could be on offer.

Am I best to leave my MPC DM number on the reservation, then check at the gate if there are likely to be any op-up's? If not I would then change it to my AA account or would it be too late to make the change?

Thanks in advance.

Simply change the number before you board the plane. And you will be fine.

no matter what you do, would you mind following up here afterwards? curious to see how it works.

I haven't done what you're doing before, but I think you to do this:

1.) Put your DM # on the reservation.
2.) Go to the lounge. Be there at least 1 hour before flight departure.
3.) At T minus 49 minutes, check with the lounge agents if you've been upgraded. Technically 50 minutes is when the North American outports close the CX flights so that's when the final say in op-ups has been determined. Barring extraordinary circumstances, the manifest is ready to go at T-50 minutes.
4.) If you have been op-upped, then change your FF# to EXP.
5.) I've never tried changing the #, so I'm not sure if the lounge agents can do it or not. If not, I think the gate agents can.

I've heard if you take away your CX FF# on which your upgrade was based on from the flight, they will have to rescind the upgrade. Don't know how that happens at T-45min when manifest is ready to 'downgrade' you back to a full J cabin.

But they will probably threaten it so most guys will say "ok I keep my CX FF#". In reality changing manifest after T-40 is much harder than changing your FFP number.

just make sure if you change your FFP number, to get a new boarding pass printed WITH the AA#, if not they will insist they never had you AA# afterwards and miles go to CX account.

Also I find with amedaus there is a bug/problem of removing FFP and even at the gate sometimes it will credit the FFP in the original booking.

to fakecd and correctioncx, interesting to hear. It doesn't surprise me that they'd try to avoid giving an op-up to someone who wanted to swap FFP, I guess that makes sense. I think it's a good point though that they are probably going to let you get away with it if you're under 50 minutes, because the station manager is usually taking care of a number of other things (and ensuring the flight departs in time), and I have to imagine the FFP swap is near the bottom of their priorities once the manifest is completed.

Nor does it surprise me that CX's system doesn't properly credit the FFP. They rarely seem to be able to automatically credit my miles when I use upgrade awards (which conceptually seems a rather simple task), so no doubt something odd like a last minute FFP switch would cause problems...literally, the last 4 flights I've used U and Z upgrades (paid for lower class and burned miles for upgrade) I have gotten 0 miles credit in the lower class and had to call to get them credited. Most recent was just a few weeks ago. Sometimes it takes multiple calls.

Few months ago I was at HKG lounge and while checking emails realized that I needed some miles to re-qualify for BA Gold. I did not realize I was op-upped (J->F) until I went to change the FFP from CX to BA. It did not change op-up status but I am unsure whether it was less than 45 minutes before boarding or there was bit more time.

I wished they use separate booking class for upgrades vs redemption and this problem will be solved.