Silly Upgrade Policy
 

Last week I (oneworld ruby) flew CX from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, SQ shuttle to Singapore, CX back to Hong Kong and brought my fiancee (no oneworld status) with me on all segments.

On both Cathay flights the check-in agent upgraded me but not my fiancee. As there were plenty of empty seats in business class I pleaded with both the check-in agent and the purser on board to upgrade my fiancee. These pleas were denied. Needless to say I gave the biz class seat to her, but I have to say this policy seems silly unless Cathay has a secret equity interest in a firm of divorce lawyers.

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Cheers,
Hong Kong Flyer
Soon to be London Flyer

I took a flight between LHR and HKG on Christmas Eve last year with a collegue. When checking in at LHR, I was told that we were two of four passengers in Business Class. I have never seen an emptier lounge at Heathrow. There was not a single passenger in First Class.

Upon boarding, I was horrified to learn that the economy class had been overbooked and ground agents had upgraded over 30 passengers. Most of them were seated in the upper deck. You know the type who gets upgraded - they're pulling out the leg rests and reclining the seats while the airfract is still on the ground, the 'holiday' types. Anyway, I made a formal complaint to the chief purser and asked her to at least move all the full fare paying passengers or Marco Polo members to the First Class cabin. There were no First Class catering, but at least the full fare passengers would be accorded some comfort. No deal. Purser passed the responsibility to ground agents. Ground agents said that if I wanted to sit in First, sure...pay the diff. That was not my point.

Anyway, I wrote to CX. A few months later they replied, explained the situation in full filghts etc but stopped short of an outright admission that that many passengers had been upgraded. Their compensation? One oneway upgrade certificate to be used on a standby basis.

This was the start of stupid CX politics that I realised that it was not worth the effort in arguing. I vowed to stop flying on them until this oneWorld thing came about.

HKFlyer - were you and your fiancee on the same or different PNRs? CX should in theory upgrade the both of you if the economy cabin is oversold. I see what you mean about their policies. Writing letters wouldn't help either.

I don't know what a PNR is, but we booked our flights at the same time through the same travel agent. However, I was on a Y fare (the Company was paying) while she was on a discount fare (I was paying).

HKFlyer -
That's why you were chosen to be upgraded but not your fiancee. You were on a full economy class ticket, and on a reservation on its own. Even though the both of you were travelling, your fiancee's reservation was seperate from yours since yours was on a full fare ticket and hers not. Your travel agent could have indicated through their reservations systems that the both of you were travelling together. It's a procedure called "TCP2" on airline computer systems .. though not many agents could bother with this!

It's also because your ticket was as close to being a Business class ticket anyway. So you would be more apt to being chosen for an upgrade.

Next time - rule of thumb, get you and your fiancee booked on the same reservation - ie same locator code. If you are travelling on seperate fares, then ask your travel agent to link the two reseravtions together. CX was right in that sense as to why they couldn't upgrade you and your fiancee together. Unless there was some 'computerised' proof that the two of you are together, they must answer to the honchos at Management why they upgraded someone from economy on a discounted ticket if the flight was not oversold.

I agree that Cathay did the correct thing according to "the book." However, in this case they managed to make both of us upset and ensure that more of my business goes to SQ. As there were biz class seats available, they could have upgraded both of us easily, and I would hope that either the purser or the gate agent is delegated sufficient authority to make the occasional exception without rath from senior management.

In any event, when we were told that we could not sit together in biz class I said I didn't want the upgrade and we would sit together in our assigned exit row seats in coach. I was told that my seat had already been reassigned and that there were no longer 2 seats together in coach and that I MUST upgrade. Silly.

Look at it this way - SQ has even tougher upgrade policies. And the food's worse than CX. Write a letter - maybe you'd hear something.

It's not worth it; I am moving to London in a few weeks and won't have to tolerate Cathay much longer.

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Cheers,
Hong Kong Flyer
Soon to be London Flyer