ID90 for F is definitely more revenue than redemption.

Also, ID pax tend to be much more 'well behaved' (i.e. no GoPros and flash photography and moving around and making noise and loud kids etc), so I'd rather be sitting with ID than churners. They have strict employee guidelines that require them to be low key and appropriately dressed when traveling as ID.

After flying paid La Premiere on AF and having absolutely loved it, here are my thoughts...

CX should follow what AF does.

1. Reduce the number of first class seats even further (maybe 3 or 4 seats in one row).

2. Limit award redemptions only to those who are in the higher tiers of the MPO program and charge them ridiculously high rates. No award redemptions for Oneworld partners.

3. Encourage passengers who might not want to pay full fare to book at lower discounted and restricted fare fares (with high change fees and cancellation penalties) with advance purchase requirements of 135, 90, 50, 28 and 14 days before departure (the fare is more expensive closer to departure). [That's how I got to fly paid AF F]

4. Have a separate and more private first class lounge at HKG just for first class passengers.

5. Offer superior ground services like escorts through security and immigration while cutting all the lines.

Oh well...while the box is nice, the old ones were much better:

http://i63.tinypic.com/wvwbqg.jpg

http://i67.tinypic.com/11ipdvt.jpg

Not gonna happen, they'd happily take the nominal value from partner award if the seat is going to fly out empty.

Actually this is already being done, recently I noticed they also start heavily discounting ex-HKG paid J. ex-outport F is also not as pricey as I thought it would be. Hope the numbers work for them and they do that instead of award space.

Already done in outports, in HKG they will argue that it is 'unnecessary', which I sort of agree. Free buggy could be a nice gesture tho.

So are ID90 tickets in F. I know friends who have paid about US$2k, obviously depends on the route as to whether it's more or less.

well, i think most people dont *care* (in a general sense) if they didnt know how easy it is to get the tickets at 1/10 of the price. afterall service levels may get different.
if you know you pay 10* the price of ur seat neighbour, and CX costed the overall service based on ur neighbour's 1/10 price. sure you'd care.

i think CX should link fare class with what you'd get onboard like JL. perhaps even down to... partner award gets you 1 glass bubbly whilst full fare get bottomless. JL is less extreme but definately those who pays full fare or is top tier gets the premium seats.

whilst CX... row 39-42 gets all packed and row 70 is half empty. but they put all the DMs up front. WHAT???? cant they fill the cheap fares and tour groups down at the back first and try give everyone up front a seat block?

Say on a route there is 3 flights a day x 12 seats (both direction) x 365 days, and if bean counters can guarantee that at least 33% of the seats will be filled with award ticket **IF** paid pax can't fill the seats, thats still a decent stop loss proposition. So releasing award space close to departure is simply a stop-loss game fueled by the guarantee of millions of miles being redeemed over long periods of time in the form of AS/AA "paying" for the seat. Although cheap, they're still paying big bucks.

And since the "F" seat can be anywhere between deeply discounted corporate / Amex rate all the way up to paid rack rate, its definitely like walking on fire trying to figure something out how to "incentive" high yield pax while preventing someone in there from getting mad lol.

Its a complex ecosystem - CC companies pulling customers in using the lure of miles, buying miles from airlines thru "transfers," which in turn, buys miles from other airlines. I wonder how much money gets exchanged... probably a lot ;)

Each CX F seat is only taking 50% extra space compare with J. Even if CX take off 3 F seats, it will only be able to convert to 4 J seats and 3 F is just too small a cabin and they still need to load at least one of everything and it will make them even harder to meet pax demand about food choices unless if they load at least 2 of everything and that will be a big waste.

op-up is part of CX marketing strategy to let some of the flyers to try the hight class for the first time so they would buy it the next time. It is also a good way CX reward its loyal flyers and make them keep flying with CX.

For those who pay using their own money, when did you start flying a class higher than Y?

It is benefitting CX to op-up J pax

I wish I knew the rate, but here is my logic:

I can "buy" an Alaska one-way F to North America on CX for roughly $1500 USD (70k miles x a little more than 2 cents USD / mile when purchased strategically during Alaska's mileage sales....which are basically offered every other month).

...And I doubt Alaska is selling those miles at a loss. While I am certain Alaska makes far more money selling mileage redeemed on their own metal, there's just no way they're offering that partner F product (CX) below what they're selling mileage for. Maybe breakeven, although even that would surprise me.

So I suspect the revenue to CX is under $1500 for that segment. I know the ID ticket cost for F depending on which N. America port is around $1k USD each way, fyi. So I don't think ID F and award redemption F are that far off each other. And as mentioned ID F don't get lounge access and the extra catering loads. Anyway ID F isn't that big of a thing for line staff, only some of the cockpit crew over a certain threshold and very senior FAs can get it. Plus deals with other airline cockpit crew and Swire.

Anyway, I like this thread. My overall conclusion is CX further shrinks the F cabin when 777X comes but who knows. There is definitely demand there for the cash product, maybe not this many seats but demand won't go to zero. And, despite my personal feelings on the issue, I do totally understand the need to fill up the cabin with award travelers if CX (after years of cutting F routes) STILL has too many F seats flying too many places. You cannot change the plane configs willy nilly so you're basically stuck with the configs you have for a while. Basically my conclusion is for the current period, CXs 33 B77H x6 F seats, utilized as heavily as CX does (CX sweats their birds almost as much as anyone not named EK, as much as 1-2 hours more per day than the big 3 US airlines), is just too much for the current market.

(Related but different, but does anyone know what it would take/cost to reconfigure 77H as 77G, and if CX has ever considered such a move to reconfigure some of the 77H fleet in a more dense and non-F configuration?).

A big part of the "problem" is just how darn good the J class hard products have gotten. Without a doubt catering has been on a steady decline but if you offer me a fresh steamed fish plated at my seat as part of a 7 course proper meal like on the ground but a lazy boy chair OR a flat bed for a 12 hour flight accompanied by bad food.....I do indeed take the flat bed without question every single time.

In a monetary basis or what? Considering i class is often marginally costlier than high subclass Y...

Most sensible suggestion. There should be an onboard service differentiation based on fare, but that usually also means personal service gets reduced as well as hardware service (but it seems like that's happening already based on what people have been saying here).

As for seat blocks: have no idea how Cathay does it back-end, but US airlines have been doing this for many years now. Front rows will cost extra unless you're paying higher fare or premium tier.

Very true indeed... But occasionally when the back of plane is fully packed by tour groups they will put me at the back.... Despite that there's still seats in front... (I need and can move to the front of the cabin every time after the booking is made and I noted that 70C or 70G is marked as my seat...)

Maybe at a minimum, reserve the first three rows for DM OWE and Y and B fare passengers only... next three for GO OWS and H and K fares...

With its historic reputation for F (though not the current offering), I believe that CX could take F market share from the Middle East carriers if it wanted to by enhancing the product substantially. The question, of course, is what does CX see for itself in the F market in the future. Where does it want to be?

Only 50% more? I thought it was closer to 133% more

Compare the first section of the two variants of 77Ws:

http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_H...300er-77g.html
http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_H...300er-77h.html

77G: 26 J seats
77H:

8 J seats, I will adjust to 12 given there are more galleys in the back of the 77H first section that the 77G puts in the second section

6 F seats
Net: 14 J seats for 6 F
Each F seat occupies 233% the space of J i.e. 133% more.

Where have you seen escort at outports. Never encountered it in Europe.

And yes, offering free buggy to DM and not to F pax is ridiculous.