As I've re-qualified for DM and no chance of getting the upgrade vouchers and also thinking about switching to BAEC, so I asked for my MPO# to be removed at the lounge...needed the luggage and lounge benefits

Seems that many have tried this at the gate and the lounge with success but in my case, unfortunately, miles were credited the following day.

I spoke to MPO and they asked me why I wanted to remove - I told them that I hadnt decided whether or not to stay with them in light of recent changes. They said they could manually request the miles to be added to my next MPO membership year or (and it sounded like quite a bit more work) they could arrange a transfer to my desired program.

I guess I was always skeptical that # removal would work seamlessly or just plain unlucky as the lounge seemed pretty confident that the # was removed.

Removing mpc# at the lounge works perfectly fine. I've done it 8 times in a row and works every time. After changing your FF# you can even get a red lounge re-entry to access the other F lounge. If you're worried then go to another lounge to verify the number has been removed - they will happily confirm. If you're moving to BAEC get them to enter your BAEC# in the lounge rather than removing.

When they removed the FF#, did they reprint the boarding pass for you showing it was now blank?

Very useful - I didnt think to ask to reprint / verify that the change had gone through...I will do so next time.

Agree that if i switch to BAEC that it makes sense to enter at the lounge...still debating whether I should drop to MPO GO or go for BAEC Silver / possiblly Gold

Why would BAEC Silver be better than MPC Gold for you if you're based in Hong Kong? OWE is debatably better than MPC GO even if you primarily fly on Cathay but can't imagine why a HK based person would go for BAEC Silver instead of MPC GO if they can comfortably qualify for MPC GO (but probably not BAEC Gold).

If you are based in HKG and can comfortably requalify for DM, then that is the best OWE status to have, no? I'm sure CX treats their DMs much better than other OWEs - people have said that CX Golds get better treatment than other programme's emeralds...

Interesting - the couple of times we tried, well before the flight, for my wife, the miles still posted. (Before flight because we were ticketed in the highest cabin on the plane, and wifey was accessing the F lounge as my guest rather than the J lounge). Straight and simple booking once, PE upgraded with my miles to J the other time.

Recall reading about the ff numbers being 'sticky' in Amadeus.

Will try at the lounge one day and see.

i had an even stranger incident where 2 of the 4 legs were credited to mpc instead of aa. it took almost 3 months for mpc to finally reverse the incorrectly posted miles and another 2 weeks to have aa properly credit them. i had the changed the ff# online and even verified the aa # on the boarding pass. it was a complete headache and basically gave up and booked a weekend trip to hk to ensure we would qualify for EXP. In the end the miles were properly credited but never again would i want to go through that fiasco.

I've re-qualified for 2017 but dont foresee being able to maintain DM in 2018, so considering BAEC where SL wont be an issue but Gold is a possibility. I've not seen much info re CX GO is better than Emerald but will do a search

IMO, CX treats OWE better than CX GO.

1) Onboard, OWE gets greeting from ISM and a bottle of water but GO only gets a "hi" from FP usually.
2) OWE could use first class lounge; GO could only use business one .
3) OWE could pre-select exit seats without extra charge- same as GO.

The only privilege for GO is probably to have better op-up chance than OWE.

Removing MPC number doesn't always gaurantee to work, I guess just human errors. I've had a few credited as normal.

I have re qualified DM at 8 months and half mark, however didn't want to push myself for some upgrade certificates, so I postponed most of my flights. Leaving only one RT flight left with CX for the next three months.

I hope CX could have a "Unused status credit roll over" option so we don't need to remove MPC before boarding and claim it later again, and they could also have us flying more this year so we could qualify earlier next year.

This sums it up. Only thing is don't think I've gotten a bottle of water in Y as an OWE, but that's probably because I don't usually fly in CX Y while posing as an OWE. Only long-hauls in J or F, where the point is moot.

Depends on one's priorities. Not familiar with other FFPs (heard JGC and QRPC are good too) but for AA and BA, there are some advantages that let these programs 'make sense' even for an HKG-based CX flyer (aka me):

AA (only good for F/J/PEY flier tho) - you can fully qualify for AA EXP just by flying CX beginning next year. AA EXP excellent mileage earning (on CX), reasonably priced awards, very good service on the phone, free/unlimited/easy award changes etc, SWUs might be a 'plus' for people, but AA's SWUs are admittedly much more inferior compared to CX's. As for CC spending in HK, I think some time soon there will be some credit card deal offering AAdv miles as AA continues to expand into HK local market.

BA - avios is much better than AM for short haul redemptions, despite the 6-day block which makes things rather annoying nowadays. Don't forget AA and BA mileages don't expire easily either. BA is not too generous on awarding mileage for flying with CX, but you can say they're not as tough as AA still, aka you can still earn some BA miles flying CX Y. Good service on the HK hotline. Easy CC amassment of avios is possible too within HKG (and the rest of the world).

Also, both AA and BA offer some sort of lifetime elite status, although that is more of a moot point probably.

Perhaps in the near future there will be an F/DM only lounge. But I don't think this will happen at all because just look at QR, they are not making their premium lounges available for their top tier elites in Y either. So this can be crossed out.

Flew LHR-HKG and asked for MPO# to be removed at the lounge and it was done - even printed out a new BP with no # showing...still got credited and now CX are saying it cant be put into my next membership year. They will just make a remark that it maybe taken into consideration if I fail to get enough points for 2018. There's also now no guarantee that these points can be carried over to another FFP, such as BAEC.

I have no idea whats going on

if your boarding pass show no FFP cant you use that as basis to claim elsewhere? i am no legal expert but an empty boarding pass should entail you the rights to credit away? if MPC credited it thats their own Darn problem no?

but you see my argument. otherwise where do you draw a line? at some point CX could just auto credit your MPC even if you put no membership #, or have other membership details for argument sake... then in such cases how do you differentiate such against the legitimate error like this where your intended removal of MPC failed?

i would use that boarding pass to credit away, say AA and keep arguing CX made error you had no intent and present thr empty boarding pass as evidence.

and be adament about it. cx can make own darn mistakes but they gotta pay for their error, not us.