Hi,

I am new to Cathay's Asia Miles program, therefore, I am unfamiliar with the whole upgrade system. I am traveling HKG-MXP late September and returning early Oct with my friend, who is a MP Gold member. However, when he called MP to request an upgrade for the both of us to J class using mileage, they said there are no seats available. The flight is 2 month away...do they release more reward J class seats as the date gets closer? What are my chances of getting the update (if less than 50% we are thinking of just taking a different airline)? How do I increase my chance of getting 2 seats on J class except for putting myself on the wait list (e.g. checking the CX website everyday to see if new reward upgrade seats are released)? Thank you very much for your suggestion/ tips!!

I've been doing something similar. They release seats 5 days before date of departure. And if I recall properly, they also release seats 360 days before departure.

From calling Asiamiles, they suggested that I call in every day to see if something pops up.

I wanted to book a seat in J class with full miles redemption, found it, but was waiting for points to transfer over, and by the time my points were in the AM account the seat was already taken. The seat wasn't there before though. So as you can see, seats do pop up.

thank you for your reply! but if i am waiting for an upgrade from Y to J. Do they give it to ppl first in line on the wait list rather than someone that happens to call when the seat frees up?

Did they seriously suggest you to call in EVERYday?

If this is the general advice they been giving to every passenger whos trying to redeem a ticket....this explain why their phone lines are so jammed, it's not uncommon for people to wait 2-3 hours on the phone.

A big FYI, you cannot upgrade from Y to J. You can only upgrade from Y+ to J. Are you planning on buying a Y+ ticket, or a plain Y ticket? If it's the latter, you're not going to be sitting in J class, period...even if award availability opens up in J. Unless you want to outright burn miles for a pure-J awards tix (without purchasing the Y+ ticket that is required for the upgrade).

I called Asiamiles and they told me if I want to upgrade from economy to business it is 70,000 miles. whereas, Y+ to J is only 30,000miles. Both round trip. So i think you are able to do that? just maybe it's not worth it?

Did you call recently? Did you mention your destination is MXP?
You been misinformed. That agent should be fired.

Putting yourself on waitlist is the safest way to go, there really isn't much else you can do, unless you want to call *everyday*, which will be torture.

Also, please call again to double-check if you can be upgraded Y to J. The CX published rules are there can only be "one class upgrade", which means from Y to Y+ and Y+ to J. Of course, CX is known to do many *unpublished* benefits for their elites, but this sounds too good to be true.

No joke. I was calling in from YVR and my call was routed to their Manila office. I actually said, "Do you seriously want me to call you everyday". She said, yes because, "updates can appear anytime and we would be most able to accommodate to your travel schedule if you checked in everyday to see if it's available".

Following our one-class upgrade system you need to buy Economy to upgrade to Premium Economy and buy Premium Economy to upgrade with miles to Business.

Being able to upgrade a ticket with money from Economy to Premium Economy depends on the ticket restrictions. Some tickets are not upgradable.

Thats from the horses mouth

Now now. In my own dealings with the Manila call center (which I documented in another thread I'm too busy to dig up right now) I got the distinct impression that the actual phone agents are doing the best they can with the unacceptably minimal training they're given.

The people who need to be fired are the ones at Cathay City who designed the training program for the agents.