Intra Asia First Class availability
 

I'm looking at booking an Avios redemption flight in First class on HKG-TPE in April. I couldn't find any availability at all on the BA Avios booking tool for April, so checked whether F was available on paid tickets using Google flights. I found availability for paid F is daily until the end of October, then drops to 3 or 4 days per week until March 24th and then no paid First at all showing after that.

Is CX abandoning short-haul F, or is it just that they won't finalise aircraft rostering until later? Or is it that they plan to shift this route to Cathay Dragon?

If F is to become available on HKG-TPE in April, when would this be likely show up on Google flights?

Last question - is F in Cathay Dragon up to the same standard as F on a CX flight code?

Referencing your last question, I recently took a KA F flight, whilst it was great in terms of service (same CX International J seat), I highly doubt it would be similar to a CX F flight (larger seat, food etc.)

To the OP:

Mate you are doing some major extrapolations simply based on the silly Avios availability! No, CX is not turning over TPE to KA. I don't see anything odd. Nothing is different here than normal!

Do some searching around. There are plenty of unhappy partner award bookers, unfortunately. Long story short CX only guarantees short haul F to/from HND on CX548/549. Everything else you're rolling the dice especially that far out. BKK, MNL, TPE, SGN, CGK and PEK (on CX, not KA) all fall into this category. I most certainly would not recommend burning your Avios on a much-desired short haul F route, because your downside (getting psyched up for F, and having an equipment swap....or even more likely, MULTIPLE schedule swaps prior to departure via the manage my booking page) is far higher than your upside (a 1.5 hour ride with a very abbreviated F soft product offering). You will go bananas if you care about F short haul, except for the route I mention above. A number of us regulars routinely argue with folks convinced their F will hold. I remember one such back and forth with a fellow about CGK a year or two ago.....CX kept it constant F, until they didn't.....changing nearly a whole month of potential F reservations after swapping the plane to a non-F plane. In reality I suspect F bookings were slim to none and probably exclusive partner awards, which is why CX is so ruthless about it. Nobody out of HKG flying CX buys regional F tickets except to Tokyo. We all know the drill. Practically, the F-scheduled flights to BKK, TPE etc when they exist are so narrow compared to capacity it really restricts you.

For PEK and PVG, F is guaranteed on KA but NOT CX. But as the poster says above it's not the same on KA. Lovely, but not bling and wow factor. Also fyi KA F utilizes the same seat as CX long-haul J (Cirrus).

Lots of useful info in your post, but did you overlook my point that it was paid flight in F from HKG to Taipei that appear to be reducing from daily until end-October, then down to 3-4 per week until end March, and after that none? I can see paid economy and business class availability well beyond April, so was wondering why I couldn't see any First class seats beyond the end of March.

I know from experience that Cathay have a habit of making last-minute equipment changes (I have had flights in F downgraded to J before). My strategy would be to book First on a flight that also had Premium economy on the basis that such flights were less likely to get changed at short notice having 2 cabins needing to be rebooked.

I wouldn't read into it.

There are rumors from credible posters and I've heard myself from CX employees, saying they're giving back some of the 77H (F equipped birds) to lessors in the next few years. But even then, it's impossible to say what impact this has on the TPE flights being served by 77H.

Just the way the rotations work, CX has a ton of 77Hs on the ground from about 7am, and they reduce throughout the day but the biggest crunch for 77H still happens at midnight - 6am. Even if they return some to the lessors, it wouldn't really explain or make sense of what's precisely happening to TPE. CX is selling TPE those dates on CX metal, just not F, so the theory of KA doesn't make sense.

TPE routes change constantly. Just a few months ago they had 35G regularly booked through the end of the year....and now they've been swapped out for A333. It can go the other way. I wouldn't be surprised to see CX selling F again on the dates you're looking for once they know their spring rotations.

I think what it means is perhaps they don't know exactly what their rotations will look like next year. If anything it definitely points to changes, which are alluded to in other posts (particularly new routes). No point for them to sell F short-haul they don't take it seriously anyway. But one thing seems certain there is no getting around the fact CX has a bunch of F equipped birds on the ground during the daytime and available to deploy regionally. That ain't changing.

I still can't find any paid F class availability HKG-TPE, HKG-SIN, HKG-BKK for dates beyond March 24th. It was my understanding that flights up to the end of April would normally be finalised by the end of the preceding October. Some of the multiple daily flights to Taipei in April are still on 777s, but no F seats are bookable. Does anyone have any further information on this?

There is simply no F class availability loaded into the booking engine at all.

As others have said, even if there is a short haul F seat available (and many times it is not), do not even count on it being there when you fly.

I'll put this here for you and others as well.

A.) If you're looking for award tickets skip this post.
B.) If you're spending cash for F intra-Asia, then the options / situation is very simple.
To SIN: you pay cash on SQ. You don't pay for F on CX to SIN if you want F because even if they sell it to you, you can't count on it. This is my biggest annoyance with CX, holds true for J hard product also. AFAIK, nobody in HK who wants to fly F to SIN goes CX. In my situation occasionally we accompany clients or other folks who "require" F to SIN and 100% of the time we buy SQ. Our office staff know it and the staff of our clients seem to know it too. So I don't think this is a big mystery regardless of what the CX website says or doesn't say. SQ has three guaranteed flights with First (well technically 2 First and 1 Suites) and that's the way you do it. The cost runs about $3k USD for a round-trip to SIN in F.

For SIN, fyu this same logic also holds true if you want guaranteed long-haul J class hard product to SIN: you fly SQ. You can guarantee longhaul J on 4x daily flights (the 3 ones with F, + a 1x daily A350 service).

To BKK: You're SOL. Emirates used to fly F to BKK but not anymore.
To TPE: You're SOL.

The bummer with BKK and TPE if you really want a nice hard product is you can't guarantee, on any of the carriers, your precise product. But c'est la vie and at least for the longest of those three (SIN) you can. But you gotta fly SQ.

So I guess my big point is CX's equipment swaps and scheduling swaps intra-Asia mean you gotta go other carriers to guarantee your hard product.

At least with TG to BKK in J, at a minimum you will get a slopey flat J seat which is still way ahead of CX's regional J seat.

Which is the most likely of CX's SE Asian destinations to have F ?

SIN depending on their mood.

Well I am thinking about reward flights, but that's stage 2. You certainly can't book a reward flight in F when there isn't any paid availability.

I know CX is flaky in respect of last minute equipment swaps, and that's a calculated risk I would be taking. If F availability ever does comes up on a 777, I would be prepared to book, with the logic that as a 4 cabin plane, it's less likely to be swapped out than a 3 cabin plane with no PE. I would book estimating there was probably a 50% chance of actually flying in an F seat. I wouldn't book F on a 3 class A330, as with few bums on seats in F (for the reasons you outline above) and no PE to worry about, that's a much lower hassle equipment-swap target.

The annoyance level when downgraded on a redemption flight, when you will get back an incontestable quantity of avios, is much lower than if downgraded on a paid-for flight, when Cathay generally calculates the refund due as a derisory amount.

A few observations:

1. I would be willing to take the other side of the trade - ie 50pc odds that your booked F flight will be swapped out (fair odds are maybe 20% in my view... there is no discernable logic in equipment swaps)

2. No A330 with F

3. A few year ago I booked redemption F to NRT. That got swapped out last min and I got cash compensation from CX (wasnt that trivial - a few hundred usd IIRC) AND I got back my miles from QF :)

My last such downgrade experience with Cathay was a long time ago - perhaps 20 years ago - and due to the handling of the downgrade then, that was also the last time I booked short-haul F with Cathay. I was offered the token sum of $50 in compensation for having my MNL-HKG downgraded. Even then $50 was nowhere near the difference in cost, and when I subsequently wrote in to complain, I was told that I had been properly compensated and would get no more; so perhaps the comp policy is a bit more realistic these days. Getting my points back, plus a few dollars on top, would make a downgrade more tolerable!