Using the Asiamiles App, it shows that I only need 10,000 miles to upgrade from Y to PY.

sorry. It should be 10000. I read the wrong line.
If the flight does not have a PY cabin at the time of booking you cannot upgrade from Y to PY. Y to J direct.

I don’t know if there’s something wrong with AM app and website, but I can’t book an upgrade award. After I select upgrade from economy to business, it will go to new flight booking for miles.

My family and I (4pax 12+) are booked SYD-BOS later this month, PY outbound and J return.

There appears to be good availability of J on the HKG-BOS sector. Does anyone have experience of bid for upgrade ($ rather than miles - we're JAL FF) in this situation?

I can't speak for the SYD sector. But from reading on here, they don't seem to play "let's make a deal." You can pay the fare difference, otherwise don't really expect an attractive bid price. If you get an offer to bid at all. I'd bet you won't get one for the BOS sector but please report back either way.

For example, we've had some of our staff recently get bidding emails. These are for intra-Asia flights. I saw a few of them, it was head scratching: for example HKG-Changsha, HKG-Taipei and Shanghai-HKG were the three. In each case, they were better off just paying for the J class ticket fare difference than the "recommended bid". I guess they could've lowballed Cathay and maybe had success, I'm not sure. But it was all still a very bad deal, even at the lowest accepted bid. Not that we would've paid for them to fly in J anyway but they were distributed around the office, someone was trying to make a point that CX is badly run. I don't think any of them paid out of their own pockets for the upgrade, even HKG-TPE the lowest bid allowed was over $100 USD for one-way. This is not good value.

I've never used the system but from what I can tell on here, it's a failed experiment.

Thanks for your reply. The somewhat annoying thing is we would have been (reasonably) happy to book Y SYD-HKG and then J HKG-BOS, but were required to book a single class across both sectors. Bid to upgrade could perhaps help, but not so much now at full J when we booked PY.

I’ll report back on how we go!

Is it worth bidding for an upgrade from economy to premium economy? I don't have any status on Cathay, and got my YYZ-SIN (via HKG) tickets with some Amex points. YouTube videos suggest the upgrade to Premium Economy for a 16 hour flight is worth it...but some posts here indicate that it's really not all that.

Minimum bid is US$515. I just put in a bid of US$525, but not sure if this is even worth it...thoughts?

I agree. Honest question for other board members: Has there ever been any success story of upgrade bids? My memory from reading this board is there were very few if any success stories of upgrade bids.

Data point: AA EXP/OW Emerald. CX807, 11/23/2019. Op-up from PE to J. Expert Flyer shows availability after I boarded as:

F2 A2 Z0 J0 C0 D0 I0 U W2 R2 E2 T2Y8 B7 H6 K6 M5 L5 V5 S4 N3 Q2 O0

I find availability for flights after check-in is closed is often inaccurate. Probably doesn't matter to CX since no new booking can be accepted anyway. In your case, W cabin is indeed full.

I have two long haul sectors coming up (JNB-HKG-IAD) and was wondering as an OW Emerald booked in E (PEY) do I have a good chance at getting an operational upgrade? The first sector departs in 4.5 hours and the IAD sector departs tomorrow night. EF is showing:

JNB-HKG
J0 W1 Y3

A few hours ago it was J2 W0. When looking at the seat map PEY is 100% occupied (no seats showing as blocked).

HKG-IAD
J8 W1 Y1

There is a chance for HKG-IAD. Report back.

Quick update - no op up on JNB-HKG. PEY was booked 100% despite EF showing W4 several hours before departure and a completely full seat map the entire time (no blocked seats).

HKG-IAD is now showing J5 W0 Y0. Anyone know how far out CX starts processing Op Ups? Or is this only done at the gate?

Have seen as early as 6hours out when I am still at home up till the gate. Depends on how full it is.

Gotcha. Looks like they did bump one person in the past 15 minutes. A seat popped open in PEY and J went down from J4 to J3.

We will see. Flight is in 2.5 hours.

ETA: looks like no dice for me. Checked with the agents. They said it’s a full flight but no seat change for me.