self upgrader
 

Greetings form KLIA.

Just thought I would share, my dismay with a passenger on CX767 this morning, who decided to self upgrade himself from Y to W with no intervention from the cabin crew when they came around to do service.
This guy was sitting in our seats when we arrived, asked him to move, then 10 minutes later another passenger kicked him out of their seat then 2 mins after take off he made a bee line to PE.

Never have considered this myself but has it seems tolerated maybe on my return Y trip in a few weeks I will self upgrade too! :P Just kidding.

wow! crazy

You should have alerted the cabin crew.

They would not have been able to know who should be sat where in Y/Y+ class.

Y to PE will be hard to police if busy cabin.
PE to J or J to F will be easier.

good to know...guess i'll have to self upgrade myself in the future!! j/p

when there are women repeatedly get pass security onto plane and to the destination with no issues, I guess self upgrader isn't that bad..

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/02/10...-minnesota-to/

The problem is this is becoming an annoying pattern it seems. Y fliers are noticing PEY is regularly empty, and will help themselves. As I've said before I had to kick a person off my seat after meal service. It's ridiculous. There's no way the crew doesn't know this but just decided to ignore it. I've even seem one person jumped to J class and slept there most of the flight and only caught after J crew was giving meal service and asked him to leave. Ridiculous.

You should write to Cathay ask them to follow-up on this issue.

A few months ago, I flew ADL - HKG in J and a PY pax helped himself into the nearly empty mini-J cabin. Little did he know that one of the Pursers had seen him and a few minutes later the Inflight Service Manager shouted: "Sir, this is Business Class. Please go back to your ticketed seat, NOW!" The guy then had the nerve to try to steal a pillow but the ISM (who by this point was already very annoyed) told him "That pillow is for our Business Class only." :D

I admit, I enjoyed every second of it. Business Class is no place for PY and Y pax. :D

Doesn't help when they leave the curtains opened either.

So glad I don't usually sit at the back of the cabin in PEY or J.

Should have alerted the cabin crew. Many folks do not know that PY is a separate class of service especially since they don't close the curtains.

If OP was dismayed, he should have done something. If he chose to let it go onboard, he should let it go now.

China does it right: 3 pax with only Economy tickets going on the empty Premium Economy to Shanghai, FA reported to local police, they came on-board and arrested the 3 of them. CX take note? (It's a local Chinese airline)

Seriously you agree that people jumping into empty seats on a plane is an arrestable offence..... Wow

If it's an empty seat in a class higher than what you paid for, then why not? If you've spent any time in the region, you'll no doubt appreciate that a zero tolerance policy is the only thing that will work for nationals of certain markets.

Because I think using police resources to deal with people chancing their arm trying to get into a better seat, probably out of ignorance, is uncalled for, and way over the top. The crew should deal firmly with it.

the problem is easily preventable by closing a curtain betweeb Y and PEY but i almost never see them do it.

Do you mean CX? The curtains were always closed on all my CX flights when I was in Y or PEY.

Without hearing the whole story, it is difficult to say what actually happened - did the crew already instruct them to return to their cabin and they did not comply?

If these passengers did not do anything else, they might not be charged or placed in administrative detention. They might just be taken away to be warned or put on the no-fly list.

CX does report ill-behaved passengers or those not following crew's orders to police. A few years ago, a rich Hong Kong woman in J was taken by police because she refused to follow crew's instruction to stow away her handbag (?) when landing.

Not consistent with my experience when flying in PEY on HKG-AKL (in A340). Most of the time, the crew left the curtains between PEY and Y open, probably owing to PEY/Y lavatories located at the back of the aircraft.

yes cx but i am talking short haul.

for long haul, my recent memory is entirely on 33g which were mostly left open even lousy attempt to close them. must be lavoratory issue

Please. They thought that even though their assigned seats were rear cabin, they had no idea that they couldn't just go up front and sit in a seat which was twice as large as long as it was empty? Sorry, I think not.

According to the fruit daily online, after that 3 people moved forward others follow suits and crew used lots of time to ask people to get back to the rear due to unbalanced flight, but this 3 people refused... So... Maybe they can charge them for threatening flight safety...

Nevertheless ignorance is not a valid legal excuse... And they have been warned...

That is more than ignoring crew's instruction. It is an offense enough for getting administrative detention and on the no-fly list.

In many jurisdictions, it would be theft of service.

What is "administrative detention"? Sounds like a time-out you give children.

It is quite similar to time-out given to children. In this case, police plays the role of the parents and the suspects play the role of children, and the maximum time-out for China is, IIRC, 15 days.

This seems like an appropriate "punishment" for self-upgraders (and ill-behaved passengers).

self upgrader
 

If CX could enable on-board paid upgrades (via handheld CC machine), this "problem" could easily go away. You just say "Mr. Smith/Chen - I see you are enjoying our larger PE seats, we're happy to let you stay there for the rest of the fight for $500, otherwise you'll have to return back to your assigned seat." Sure, CX would have to get over their only-pay-the-fare-difference policy, but maybe they'd make a few bucks too.

CX can probably do onboard upgrades, but that won't stop some passengers to grab available seats - as they are empty anyway, why pay?

A very simple solution to this will be to use weight sensors like cars (the sensors car use to determine if there is a front seat passenger and turn on airbag). If those are installed on 15k usd cars they cant be expensive either.

Using these with some software to alert the crew if more than expected seats are in use in any cabin >=PE.

Another potential approach is to make a record of passengers who are self upgrading (BPs have seat numbers which have enough information to track them). Something like warning for the first 2 times and then put them on Nofly list for the airline until they have paid the difference between the cabins.

Any idea if SQ pey faces the same issue as CX? It seems this thread emphasizes how easy it is for one to jump between Y and PEY....curious what SQs approach is. aren't they rolling out PEY too?

For CX, PEY seems to be a thing they sell as a separate class to travelers, but internally they're less concerned about the distinction provided enough of us pay for it. For example, regionally the curtain is often left open and there appears to be zero service differentiation.

Anyway, curious if SQ pey has this self upgrading phenomenon.

Ahmmm ... a shift in a couple of passengers from Y to PEY will hardly make a difference in flight balancing.

Look, I can't speak to any relevant cultural differences, but I would think that if confronted with the choice of (a) pay $500 or (b) move, few passengers would try to propose an option (c). And it's certainly a "friendlier" option for the FAs to pursue.