Great result CXfan ... enjoy the upgrade.

I've been fortunate to have had a couple of bumps to Business and it's a different experience altogether. Although my current flight/redemption booking hasn't proved to be successful. There was only availability for the LND Heathrow - HK leg but not the HK-Cebu, so I finally decided to redeem LDN-HK+the return sectors and purchase the J seat for HK-CEBU to avoid any dramas in HK... (the original plan was to redeem my 72,000 miles for the whole return trip on Premium Economy).

Lesson learned - reward tickets are not guaranteed - even for Silver MPC members who waitlisted 6 months prior to departure.

I think airlines can do a better job of avoiding these scenarios for passengers. Of course revenue is priority but the customer experience sets airlines apart.

For now - happy it's sorted. Thanks for checking the availabilities and tips guys.

I'm not sure this assertion ever applies to any FFP.

Just a quick run-down of redemption theory - seat availability is always
Flexible revenue tickets > restricted revenue tickets > redemption tickets > industry discount/staff tickets

Only if CX (or any other airline) isn't confident of selling tickets for revenue would redemption seats occur

CX algorithms do release a number of seats right at the start of the redemption window, which are very attractive. However they will not do so for seriously in-demand flights - such as CX580, CX251 or KA212 right at the start of a public holiday.

I heard they provide a great redemption experience on iredeem for iPads.

The theory is correct and fine, but the way CX communicates to passengers who have applied for redemption seats is key, and what makes the carrier stand out. It's simply not good enough to say 'redemption seats are not guaranteed' - this is the line I was fed by the MPC for months - and not provide further information. The Marco Polo Club is specifically designed to reward customers, who pay a premium for being a member, with an enhanced service. They should be doing more to communicate to members re the status of their redemption applications.

A simple practical solution can be: email MPC members who are on the redemption waitlist 28 days / 14 days prior to departure of their flights (esp for busy periods such as Xmas) and give an assessment of chances of a seat being offered, with the policy that after the information has been offered the member can make their own decision to find an alternative or remain on the waitlist.

Information is power. Help your most valued customers by giving them information, which leads to increased trust and the ability to efficiently weigh up their options. Don't leave them to guess. That's great service.

I'm surprised they opened it up too. I would've thought the flight was filled with Las Vegas bound CES attendees, with more looking to book. A lot of my Chinese colleagues were looking to travel on the 8th or 9th. All looking for deals, of course, and have still not pulled the trigger. :-)

Anyway, I'm curious what TIME you received your message from CX informing you of your upgrade? Urban legend says they don't process waitlist in real-time; I've read various speculation on FT that they do it as a batch run. They may open redemptions/upgrades at say 6AM Hong Kong time, and then process the redemption / upgrade batch at say 1:00PM Hong Kong time. Trying to identify the time they do that batch run would be valuable information. Logically they would notify you after completing the batch.

I've thought of posting an individual thread asking about this, but it's probably better left in this thread.

Can you discern any patterns (all times are HK Time):

Seems to be manually initiated processing.

Upgrade never cleared, but I was able to grab the last two seats in the PEY cabin during check-in using Asia Miles. Does this usually work despite waitlisted upgrades not clearing? There were never any open award seats in the cabin (from the date I started to check) so they must have needed to free up last minute Y seats?

I would guess there are two types of processing at work, which correspond with the two ways in which waitlists can be confirmed. Firstly if someone else cancels an award seat they'd booked earlier, in which case that is seat is automatically (and often immediately) reassigned to someone else on the waiting list without any need for manual processing. Secondly, when revenue management decides to release additional award seats for a particular flight (presumably after these have been recommended by a programme that monitors booking loads for various flights). That second category is something much more likely to require manual intervention, and so more likely to occur on working days in Hong Kong. I've noticed a lot of waitlists seem to be confirmed on Monday mornings (and percysmith's list seems to contain more Mondays than any other days of the week). Just speculation, but perhaps someone returning to work on Monday, and approving the various award seat release recommendations that have accumulated over the weekend?

Hi all! Does having multiple waitlisted bookings affect future waitlist bookings? I currently have 8 waitlisted PE bookings and couple of unconfirmed J bookings (I was checking seat arrangement using CX website and it registered all my dummy bookings to my account). Im afraid these items will affect my future waitlist bookings.

Yes. Agents would cut short your ticketing deadline when they clear ur waitlist

True. That just happened to me. How about lets say if 6 months later, i got waitlisted again, will they cut short my ticket deadline?

Just happened to me - one ticket 4 sectors, all CX/KA, all except first sector confirmed, deadline Jan 31; waitlisted another flight for first sector, shortly the new flight clears, agent calls and deadline becomes Jan 26 (while I continue waitlist for the original first flight); called later on to change my second sector, available thus immediately confirmed that, and deadline becomes Jan 31 again.

I don't know if I should trust that, so maybe to ticket it by Jan 26 to be safe?

Check displayed deadline on https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_...e-booking.html