Seat maps are not too meaningful for availability. As sscywong said, they may just be closing the inventory for award waitlist clearance, or a delegation just took all the remaining J seats.

J0W9 means almost no chance of PEY->J op-up for anyone, even GO, DM or DMP. There is even almost no chance of mileage upgrade. There is plenty of availability in PEY and none in J, but that may change in the next few days too.

Hi guys - I have a really newbie question:

1. So my ticket is JFK-HKG-xxx ticket where JFK-HKG is booked into PE and HKG-xxx is booked into J. Would trying to upgrade JFK-HKG/ HKG-JFK be considered 2 one ways or 1 roundtrip? And will they just consider the JFK-HKG portion or will they look at the full flight even though second leg is booked into a discounted J fare?

2.If I want to use my asia miles to upgrade but want to accrue AA miles (need to hit that 100k!), what would be the best way to do it? Call/hold/ get it upgraded.

3. Two of us are travelling. Can all the upgrade miles come out of my account or do I need to get my traveling companion their own AsiaMiles account as well?

Thank you!

One round trip.

If your companion is on your redemption list, his/her upgrade can be from your account.

Hi all - I have a question regarding upgrades to multi city flights.

I'm looking to book in December a multi city flight from YYZ-HKG and then HKG-JFK. I'd like to have the YYZ-HKG leg of the trip in J class and the HKG-JFK portion in the cheapest class available (if they had a cargo hold option, I'd take it!).

Given CX's upgrade policy, would it be possible to book a the whole trip in PEY in W or R and upgrade just the YYZ-HKG leg of the trip using AM?


Thanks!

Yes. that will cost you 27,500 AM

But why would you want to do so? Ticketing R one way means you need to ticket at least M (or K? Don't know the fare rule for ex-NA) class for your return leg, or you'll need to ticket them separately...

p.s. YYZ J upgrade availability changes rapidly... I called to check the availability for upgrade last Wed, tried to ticket one on Fri but it's already turn from "wide open for redemption" to "need to waitlist"... At last it took me two days to get the waitlist cleared (which I didn't expect so as it only took them 6 hours to clear my HKG-JFK upgrade...)

just an additional data point for this thread

seems that the elusive double op-up remains possible these days
I flew with my father on CX197 on 28/4/2017

I was flying in J (on a discounted I class ticket) and my father was flying in Y (ticketed in V).

Quite an overbooked flight it seems and in the lounge he was upgraded from Y directly to J (seat 15G). He's only a SL these days too so was a nice surprise for him!

And another additional data point for this thread.

My other half just got an op-up to PE on the outbound leg of her HKG-BOS-HKG flight. Underlying fare was V (economy core). She's AM only; no MPC membership.

I'm guessing there are barely any elites on that flight?

Flight is CX812, HKG-BOS, 1st May 2017.

Flying BKI-HKG (Y) - LGW (PE). Have a few hours spare in HKG. Would be prepared to pay for a PE-J upgrade if reasonable from HKG-LGW.

I cannot upgrade ticket at moment as the BKI-HKG flight has no seats left from BKI-HKG, but HKG-LGW does. With a willingness to pay, and expecting availability, all I can read from this thread is that CX would not want my money? Is this correct?

Is there a ticketing desk - airside or landside in HKG I can investigate the possibility of paying for a J upgrade? (I've a few hours on the connection so can go landside if needbe).

Thanks!

"CX will not want my money...". No, this is incorrect. They'll almost always happily take your money and let you upfare. What they won't do is play let's make a deal and give it to you on the cheap if that's your meaning. Depending on your PEY sub fareclass, the upfare is going to look somewhere between astronomical ie a few thousand+ USD and probably not too attractive (if you're in E class) to pretty reasonable, maybe 1k USD or even less and possibly quite attractive (if you're in W). Plenty of folks pay up. What they WILL do is be okay if J goes out with empty seats, than raffle/bargain it off. They tried an expirement before which is supposedly coming back at some point, bidding for upgrades, but the first trial was a failure so CX isn't really in a hurry.

You can just go to the transit desk airside, no need to go landside. I've paid to upgrade my ticket at the airside transit desk on a number of occasions before. The agents are very helpful. Just tell them hi, heres my itinerary, I want to upfare my HKG-LGW sector, can you please price it. Expect to wait perhaps 5-10 minutes, they might have to call to ticketing to get the exact difference. I think the longest it took me once was 15 minutes or so and that was an outport. Not a big problem and you have plenty of time to do it.

Their logic is fairly straightforward. You don't raffle off J and F class to the highest bidder at the airport. Theyre also trying to incentivize folks to buy up to the higher PEY (and Y) subfareclasses in advance. They make the argument letting EVERYONE get the same bidding price at game time discourages advance purchase of more flexible fares. You may or may not disagree with their logic, but at least speaking from experience they have happily accepted my upfare purchases every time! You just gotta be ready to pay.

If you're in W class, then it will really be reasonable I think. Some of the W and even R fares are pretty pricey, and I think more folks should inquire about upfaring because they'd be surprised at how it can be somewhat reasonable at times. The same arbitrage exists from J to A class (full fare J vs A). If A still exists on sectors the upfare is minimal! Sometimes quite well worth it.

That makes complete sense, thanks for the comprehensive feedback - it reflected exactly what I was anticipating from this thread. I am in E class, so will therefore assume US$2000 pp, when I would pay 1/3rd of that!

Every airline has different formulas that they assume works for them. I've done a lot of MH/BA flying so probably have unrealistic assumptions based on MHUpgrade & Avios upgrades!

Thanks again, i'll feedback what they say.

First time CX flyer here. I'm in a similar position to Sam Bee, wanting to upgrade the EWR-HKG leg of a longer itinerary from PE (booked in E) to business class. I may call to see how astronomical the charge would be :) I do wonder though, as I see it's possible to upgrade BA tickets with AsiaMiles, can one upgrade a CX ticket with Avios? I have a boatload of those.

No, you cannot.

You have EWR-HKG in E. Your options are
1) Upfare to R (next PE bucket) and upgrade by asia miles subject to availability, 27,500 asia miles one way; or
2) Upfare to I (subject to your ticket fare rules) but the difference is likely to be astronomical.
3) Chance an op up as BA Gold.

Option 3 it is then :D Thanks!

Before our other CX regulars (or those that don't fly with CX but somehow tend to masquerade as) chip in, just bear in mind that the statistical likelihood of that happening is going to be tiny.

In fact if you are going somewhere else (i.e. not terminating in HKG) the fare difference may not be as high as you think, it could be like $2-3k (roundtrip) so you can still try calling in.

And there's actually 'option 4)', another wildcard but I'll need EWR regulars to validate this, sometimes CX may sell you day-of-departure upgrades, not sure if this happens at EWR but sometimes I see offers at ORD, my regular outstation.