percysmith

I suspect biggest buyers of miles (thru MS, or trading buy) aren't even MPO Green.

chuck1

Any reason for this?
Most flights are J9 C9 D9 I9
Looking really for Aug 20 but checked Aug 13 too.

I also had a really hard time mid-August from the US to HKG too in J/F.

michael2K

Sent a question to AsiaMiles :
"If award seats available in CX on certain date under AsiaMiles Choice but not under Standard..... and want to add this route to my Oneworld itinerary , would the seat be availible or not ? "

Got their reply :
“ Thank you for contacting The Marco Polo Club Service Centre once again.
We would like to let you know that availability is subject to a number
of factors, in particular, time of year, routing and even time of day.
There is no fixed number of award seats allocated to particular award
type. If you would like to check the award seats availability on your
preferred itinerary, please let us know the following information by
return email …… As soon as we receive the above details, we will check seat availability for your requested flight(s) and then get back to you”.

If seats available under Choice but not Standard, can I get the seat under Oneworld Award ?

percysmith

Confirmation memberservices email is being answered by chatbots - this is not the answer by a wide margin.

Ask again and see if you get a human. Interested in the answer also.

Repooc17

The availability of a cabin for a particular flight does not correspond to availability of awards. CX decides on how many awards to release.

You are looking for available awards in August only a month prior? If available, I would think most of them may have been redeemed already. CX may release more closer to departure but not always, especially ex-HKG.

chuck1

That's true but I've always found this route not to be too difficult at least at off peak times.

percysmith

Variation on a theme of https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...l#post29964656

percysmith

chuck1 your dates available as standard awards, thru Singapore

Reminds me of "If What You Gave Me Last Was Tea, I Want Coffee. If It Was Coffee, I Want Tea" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/11/11/coffee-tea/

"If you want Bangkok then go thru Singapore"
"If you want Singapore then go thru Bangkok"

beachfan

OMAAT has a blog post on the issue today.

https://onemileatatime.boardingarea....-class-awards/

sxc

QRC3288

Restricting availability to partners makes sense, *if you have some strategy to make your own currency more valuable*. Some of the whinging about lack of availability in Alaska, BAEC, etc. I don't have a lot of sympathy for given how long those programs have been arbing CX metal. But the big caveat is here, CX must make Asia Miles considerably easier to redeem for everyone. Customers are global these days. If an Alaska member cannot find availability on CX, but Asia Miles has 4x biz seats open, and that member has a ton of either American Express or Citi points, then he/she will transfer to Asia Miles. The overwhelming majority of points are earned via credit cards these days, and the arguments by each loyalty program that they have a captive customer are flimsier by the day. Translation: the company who "owns" the desired product - aka, the airline owns the metal - is who should have the bargaining power more and more. The flexible credit card points ensure a US-based Amex customer, for example, is everyone's customer: including Asia Miles, Singapore Airlines, and multiple other airlines' customer depending on where he/she can get availability. And what can Asia Miles do special? Well, if CX had their game together they could significantly favor Asia Miles members over competitor currencies burning on Cathay, similar to how SQ does it. Because that customer can easily accrue Amex points, hunt around each program for availability, and transfer like a mercenary when availability is there.

But Asia Miles restricting EVERYONE'S availability, including Asia Miles, makes no sense as it appears to be the case reading on here. I am still willing to give CX the "benefit of the doubt" that they're tinkering with AM availability right now. I was told explicitly by both a CX and Asia Miles executives (on separate occasions) the plan is to make Asia Miles be a more attractive currency to redeem in than partners. Obviously, redemption rates aren't the only story...if Asia Miles is more expensive but widely easier to redeem, then it could still be a lot more valuable.

However, reading people on here it seems like Asia Miles is also hard to redeem. So they're restricting everyone, at least for now. Totally foolish IMO and missing a chance to make Asia Miles more than just an Asian niche awards program.

I can can at least admit the previous regime of allowing everyone to redeem (partners + Asia Miles relatively equally) was preferable, versus restricting everyone equally.

Beasley

But you seem to overlook the fact that seats are actually purchased by the respective airline partner program ....... similar to the FF points for each program being purchased by the respective credit card program.

So, it is not as if CX simply give the seats away for free to the partner airline loyalty program fliers ...... there must be some form of transaction to ensure each airline is appropriately compensated.

QRC3288

This is true, of course. But it doesn't change the train of logic. The trend (in the US at least, not sure about other countries) is overwhelmingly towards convertible currencies. And even with single airline credit cards, what the issuers have discovered is actually they are being treated by the customers similarly : customers apparently are signing up for like 10 airline credit cards. Anyway, credit card companies have figured this game out - they are the bank behind them, so they see the data - and are pushing towards their own currencies instead of the airline's. This keeps more of the value in house to the credit card issuer.

To sum up a long story, more and more mile these days are transferred into programs. They are not "native" to the program itself. And if you're Amex, for example, you use this to negotiate against AA or whoever their transfer partners are in OneWorld. You say to AA, "actually, we're partners with Asia Miles directly, so we're not going to give you credit for all the customers you claim you have, since (x)pct of "your" business is customers burning AA on other partners we can transfer to you directly. So we will only pay you 0.6 cents a mile, not 1 cent like you're demanding." Basically it helps the credit card companies extract more value too, and furthers the cycle where customers will be using more flexible currencies.

The global nature of customers these days (anyone from anywhere can sign up for any FF account) and the fact you can transfer to many currencies from many cards, means the power has shfited to the convertible currency, or the native airline people actually want to fly. Instead of alliance partner programs with crappy underlying airlines.

If you want to fly SQ first or biz on award points, for example, you either earn in SQ, or earn in a convertible currency (Chase, Citi, Amex, SPG/Marriott, etc.). You don't earn in UA since SQ won't permit premium redemptions. I think we're going to see a lot more of this type of this situation in the next decade. There will still be plenty of room for FF programs, but I'd be betting heavily against the programs run by crappy airlines like those in the US, and betting more on premium airline programs or the convertible currencies who can transfer there.

However.....lol. Cathay seems to have screwed this all up, because an important aspect to my whole theory above is at least being able to redeem in your OWN currency: Asia Miles. CX IT is terrible so I say let's see what happens over the next few months. I think this is their intention based on my logic and some conversations I've had with them, but of course the facts aren't playing out yet since Asia Miles availability also appears to suck after the change.

ermen

what is strange here is that

1. cx seems to be restricting Y to SEAsia Why? (pardon the pun). arent they getting slaughtered by budget carriers? will limiting redemptions increase yields?
2. close in J redemptions are available on AM for O&D HKG flights. but not so for partners. but if you add a transit segment for the said flight, availability seems to open up for partners

so im confused as to what cx is trying to achieve

percysmith

When the changes were announced and before their implementation I had the same expectation too - AM will use waitlists to punish partner programs (either cutting them off, or forcing them to pay higher reimbursement rates), get greater control over redemption seat access and increase their ability to practice price differentiation (I'm thinking CX is going to be like jade market trader where price hagging are done by hand motions under a covered cloth).
And I was perfectly prepared to be a sucker for that - I was prepared to go to Choice for my public holiday flying. I can drive my trading cost of purchasing miles down low enough to accommodate that.
I think QF FF does this already, so no big deal.

It's been 3 weeks since the change
We've seen partner programs' availability cut off, then reinstated
I think what we're seeing now should be what CX intended, or otherwise CX is massively incompetent for a publicly listed company.

Assuming the former, I think CX is practicing is very sinister.
They rather fly seats empty, rather than filing seats at unsatisfactory prices.

Scalpers do that.
I was lucky enough to get a 7/7 Wong Tze Wah Saturday night seat, without paying scalpers. I received assistance from a hongkongcard.comer who trades on the side and basically is a version of Flash Boys when it comes to trading tickets and iPhones.

I was surprised to see a few but noticeably groups of empty seats.
He confirmed they were scalped seats - the scalpers letting the seats go empty rather than letting fans pick them up for a pittance like grAAber last-minute redemptions.

I perfectly understand this from a CX economic point of view - this is an attempt to eliminate demand leakage https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...e#post25913898 . A monopolistic supplier (show organiser, slot hog airline) can do that.

And I believe CX is practicing this now.
I had this pic from 16/6/18 KA380 HKG-FUK forward Y cabin pic https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...l#post29872510
16/6 is the start of a long weekend, there are no natural disasters or reasons to avoid Kyushu at the time (if you ignore the measles scare)



I didn't check how many seats were open for redemption on the KA380 close in.
Though I was pretty sure there weren't that many far out, especially after redemption has been opened to Avios redeemers at T+354 days.

I can assure you the inbound flight was overbooked - I was opuped as a nobody
BUT - on the same night, a contact told me CX595 KIX-HKG had numerous J seats not filled https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...l#post29879174



I am increasingly convinced that CX is practicing more aggressive, scalper-like revenue management, up to the extent that it is more readily willing to fly seats empty than to make them available for low prices for fear of demand leakage.
(I treat redemption as a fare - one that is not readily accessible to everyone such as corporates and disorganized individuals, and is used for price differentiation).

We can't stop CX being more aggressive with redemptions, if they can live without them
What I can do is to stop transferring value to them thru trading for and redeeming their points, but they will not transfer any value back to me - that's why I took my valuation of miles down
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...l#post29972064
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cathay-pacific-marco-polo-club/1910886-asia-miles-changes-effective-22-june-2018-a-25.html#post29943805