No First Class Award Allocation on Empty Flights?
 

During either November 03 or January 04, I was unable to get any First Class award seats on the following routes:

HKG-SYD
AKL-HKG
HKG-DXB

Most of the flights do not have 1 person, revenue or award, booked in First. I am Oneworld Emerald (through AA). Unlike CX, AA will not waitlist its members on CX flights.

When, or if, would one expect Cathay to make allocation on these routes? Certain city pairs like YVR-HKG had 4 award seats opens out of 8 total on the Airbus 340 so it is clear Cathay has made a decision not to allocate to Z class.

I will also post this site to AA and Oneworld to see if I can get any comments there, so please accept my apologies if you see it there as well.

Thanks.

You can get F award seats on those routes during non-high season (using AA). Otherwise CX will make those available to CX Diamond only (at least this is the pitch that I have been given as to why I should become Diamond when I am already double emerald). Most likely some seats will stay unsold and become available less than a month before departure date; my guess is there will be plenty of short notice availability but very little otherwise this year. Given CX's need to maximize their premium revenue the rest of the year (and their ability to do so!) I personally think this is a fair and reasonable policy.

Any reason to be concerned about A availability?

If you are sure there is space, issue the ticket with different dates, then call CX and get a floor manager to waitlist you for the dates you want. Have done this before - sounds like a pain but it worked out in the end.

I suspect CX deliberately zeros-out availability in First on some routes. Frustrating.

You just have to keep checking. My partner and I booked an AAdvantage award for travel in September ORD-SFO-HKG-MEL-HKG-LAX-ORD back in April. All segments but the HKG-MEL segments were available in F. We just kept calling back every week and the seats did open up about 10 days ago.