percysmith

In the CX redemption thread at AAdvantage forum AAers say JAL provides best approximation of CX availability to AAdvantage members for redemption.

Given they do not use AM search engine itself it implies AM consistently provides more seats to own members than partners.

dannyhk

From today's South China Morning Post:

Cathay reviews loyalty scheme to give more free flights to own customers

Cathay Pacific is to set aside more free seats for its seasoned frequent fliers, under the latest proposal to revamp the award- winning airline's loyalty scheme.

The plan is to slash the number of free air tickets available for partner airlines and to reallocate those to Cathay's own Marco Polo Club members, sources close to the ongoing review say.

However, it is understood the number of points needed to redeem a flight will at the same time go up incrementally.

Cathay had been examining the feasibility of shifting its focus to members of the Marco Polo Club and another rewards scheme, Asia Miles, well before the Consumer Council criticised unnamed carriers last month for operating mileage schemes like "a lucky draw". No decision had been made yet, the airline said.

"A review is under way to ensure our programme continues to meet the changing needs of our members and is competitive with the loyalty clubs of other major global airlines," a Cathay Pacific spokeswoman said.

At present, Cathay lets clients of partner airlines book flights using air miles accrued through their own flier programmes. But these passengers can redeem Cathay flights at much cheaper rates than Marco Polo Club members, putting its own privileged customers at a disadvantage.

One such partner carrier is American Airlines, which at the same time gives away tens of millions of free miles to flyers each year via credit card schemes.

The sources say Cathay believes it is time to stop allowing external redemptions when the airline is capable of filling aircraft with paid passengers - boosting long-term profitability.

Cathay frequent flyer member S.C. Ho, of the "diamond" top tier, said of the possible changes to the scheme: "This is great - more seats for us who actually invest in our membership."

jerrywu

This news is interesting.

It is about time that CX do something to give/allocate more seats to its royal customers.

UKdiver

If my experience is to go by, it has been much more difficult to redeem CX using AAdvantage in the past six months on ex-Europe flights. In recent searches seats showing available on BAEC and AsiaMiles were not available for AAdvantage redemption despite numerous phone calls.

kaka

its been harder for asiamilers to redeem sth usable.

Pickles

I thought Betty Tung was already assigned seat 1A anyway.

dannyhk

Are we sure this really represents Oneworld policy? i.e. are there any other official statements from Oneworld to this effect?--apart from this one quotation in one newspaper article (which was, in any case, interpreted as meaning something rather different in post #3 of this flyertalk thread.)

I've seen numerous examples where seats available with Asiamiles are not available through BA Avios (and its clearly not a syncing issue, since it persists over many days). Given how good CX seems to be at following other OW rules (witness the many posts about how well they treat OW elites) it would seem strange for them to be so blatently defying a OW rule on equal award availability if it really exists.

Nor are they the only ones. There are several threads on the LAN forum about how LAN deliberately restricts much of its award availability to a 1-3 day window for OW partners. For example, post #21 in this thread.

dannyhk

In all the discussion about restricting award availability for other OW partners, we've hardly touched on the other news in today's SCMP article: That some sort of mileage devaluation will be coming as part of all these changes to MPC/AM.

Guess that's pretty much inevitable after what recently happened with BA (and will no doubt happen before too long with AA). But wonder what form this will take? After all, MPC redemptions are already pretty pricey in many cases (in some cases, more expensive than BA even after their recent devaluation)

brunos

There have been many posts showing that availability on CX is much better for MPC than for other OW FFP. I can attest that it has been going on for a couple of years. My daughter is MPC Gold and I am BAEC Gold (OWE), and I can easily see the difference in availability.

soonyeap

My DM status has not been renewed automatically when i reached 80 sectors last week. Maybe they will have a higher threshold in the new program?

77W_12A

When does your DM expire as stated on the card? If you hit the 80 sectors before the expiry date, you have to call MPC to reset it.

A couple years back, my DM was through December 2012. I requalified around October. I gave them a call as I had an upcoming flight and they resetted it for me.

AA_EXP09

That might not be a good thing should CX value the Asiamiles cost of tickets less than whatever AA is paying CX for the Z/U class tickets.
(I don't care to redeem T/X class unless using BAEC Avios.)
Alternately, CX could easily expand even more flights to the USA should CX feel that AA will always provide some cash via Z/U class redemptions should they not sell enough seats on the new route.
(I have seen it easier on many dates to get availability to LAX than BOS/CHI.)

QRC3288

I'd be thrilled if the partner redemption arbitrage finally changed.

Just last week, I had another situation where I was waitlisting for an F award at 2 months out. F had 4 seats available for sale, as did the flight 10 minutes later (KIX-HKG). So 8/12 F seats available for sale 2 months out. I surmised on another thread I wouldn't clear the wait list.....but would get op-upped. Which is exactly what happened. On board we went out full 6/6 in F. Me (op-up) and my companion (revenue), 2 AA redeemers (happily told me in galley they booked almost a year ago), and 2 unsure but I suspect cash, because they had two helpers in J class. So the 2/6 seats that were taken while I was on the waiting list were indeed partner awards who grabbed them verrry early.

I'm quite thankful for my op-up rate - it has skyrocketed since the recent change, and I am getting op-ups despite checking in 75 minutes in advance at the airport (before, if I didnt do OLCI my op-up chance was lower) - but I would have happily burned 30k Asia Miles (or whatever the upgrade rate from J to F on KIX is) 2 months ago for the certainty of knowing.

alphaod

Why would you want to reset it early? Would they extend your tier a full another year or would it begin a new membership year from the day of reset?

I'm hitting the 120,000 miles needed for renewal very soon and my year ends December 31st. Only membership since January 2014 so not much experience here with resets at DM tier.

77W_12A

I did it because I had another long haul flight coming up. I had already reached DM. If I didn't have them reset it early, I would have 129,000, which I wouldn't need. I rather have the extra 9,000 go for the following year.