I fly a lot between Vancouver and NYC, usually Air Canada as a 75K elite which they effed up so I'm off them now. Anyways I was "green" with Cathay and out of nowhere they bumped me up to business since they don't have a lot of members fly between Van and NYC.

Do they put people in business until it fills up based on availability going down by status? On the way back I didn't get a upgrade even tho there was room in business class. Not sure what was different

They don't have a lot of MPO members flying between YVR and NYC? That hasn't been my experience.

In my experience, opups only happen to accommodate oversales in Y.

That being said, the AM upgrade from Y+ to J is very cheap, and a real bargain from YVR to NYC. I would imagine that every GO and DM member flying takes advantage of this to get a flat bed for five hours. That would leave very few status members in Y+ if there was a need to upgrade.

There is less pressure on the way back, though. With a nighttime arrival, Y+ is perfectly adequate, and so DMs and GOs may just wait for opups rather than spend miles.

CX does not op up unless Y was oversold. Since the YVR-NYC leg is the final sector of the flight from HKG, it sometimes gets oversold. Being a Green MPC helped you in getting that elusive op up but don't expect it every time as there are other elite members ahead of you on most flights , like the return when the long haul from JFK-HKG fills up most. Let's just say that maybe it's a way of welcoming you to CX.. and what do you think of their Business Class, by the way when compared to AC?

That's like asking how do you like this 400 ounce gold bar vs. your burning paper bag of doggy doo you have there on your front porch?

I flew on AC to YVR in their long haul J that goes on to SYD and was amazed to see CX J seats (e.g. same company and layout and controls) that are for some reason narrower and about 8 inches shorter than CX yet they have only 2 more of them in J than CX does on the 773, which is almost a violation of the laws of physics. (AC has 42 75/20.3 inch seats and CX has 40 82/21 inch seats). They were 4 across vs. 3 as well.

I asked the purser when AC was upgrading to their next-gen J seats and she told me that these were the next gen seats. So I was stumped as to how this was the case but I had to get there for a wedding and I sure wasn't going to go via JFK or on WestJet. She could not explain having 42 vs. 40 despite each seat being 10% shorter.

I flew in the 330 on the way back, same seats, fewer of them, and using the CX layout of 1 on the left and 2 on the right.

Service is OK if a bit dull, food-wise.

That's odd. If you're travelling on CX from YVR-JFK then you should be on CX888. That is flown by a 77H has 6F and 53J http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Cat...77-300ER_A.php The one with 40J is a 77G http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Cat...77-300ER_C.php

The AC33 YVR-SYD should be flown by a 77L http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Air...ng_777-200.php (777-200LR) - the plane's smaller?

That was the herringbone. They're mostly gone now.