Could someone help me figure out the following:

1. what class ticket do I need to buy to upgrade from economy to premium economy?
2. how do i determine whether or not premium economy upgrade avail exists before purchasing the economy class ticket?
3 how long does it take to transfer miles from spg to cathy?

1. M class for Y -> W, R class for W -> J
2. There are a number of services which will allow you to look at the fare buckets available for a specific flight. While award/upgrade buckets are not normally shown, if E class seats are of limited availability, upgrades from Y will be even more limited. You can also check Asia Miles/MPC to determine if classic award seats are offered. Note CX policies in these areas seem to have been changed in the recent past.
3, Some one else will have to answer

Happy wandering
Fred

1) I believe if you want to upgrade from Econ it should be Y, B, H, K or M class only.
2) You can try calling the marco polo hotline?
3) done it before and it took a few days (if i remember it was 2-3 days) .... but since SPG's merger with Marriott who knows (cant wait for them to sort the kinks out)

If your flight is sufficiently far out, the lowest booking class in your "higher" seating class might be cheaper then the more expensive booking class in the "lower" seating class required to be allowed for an upgrade.....

I got caught out by this so many times now I am keeping a cheat sheet in Microsoft OneNote:

For Cathay Pacific, only fare classes Y, B, H, K and M are eligible for Economy to Premium Economy Class Upgrade Awards. Only fare classes W and R are eligible for Premium Economy to Business Class Upgrade Awards. Upgrade Awards are only applicable from Economy Class to Business Class for flights without Premium Economy Class. Only fare classes J, C, D and I are eligible for Business to First Class Upgrade Awards.

doesnt have to be far out. fly out of outports. i have successfully converted many of my colleagues. they buy ex china J to USA for less than PEY fares ex hk.

fight the evil CX empire. exercise arbitrage

[MENTION=5644]fakecd[/MENTION]:
what is an @outport?
what is ex china?

Also, seems the best to confirm upgrade availability is to call CX, right?

Awesome! This is exactly the data I wanted... Also keeping it in onenote!

where do find the fare class on the cathay website price results? I see seat class but not fare class.

An outport is port other than HKG.
Ex China means the first segment is departing from a port in China
If you are a MPC member, call MPC. Otherwise call AM. However, they never give you a definitive answer until they are ready to process your upgrade, i.e., when you have an upgradable ticket.

If you book on their web page, when you get to "Select your fare", you can click on "See more benefits" to see if the fare is upgradable.

@cxfan1960 awesome! Thank you for your time!

It's there, though it's far from obvious where to find it. It took me quite some time to find out this info.

After entering your preferred travel details, you get to the dates vs. pricing overview. Select the date (-combination) you want.

Then you get to the web page with the outbound (and inbound if selected) flight options.

Select both an outbound and an inbound option.

Then, the web page does some flashing and at the top, you get an overview of the flight dates and the total costs.
The total costs does have a down arrow next to it at the right side and the total is clickable.
Click on it and you get the detailed overview of all the segments, timings as well as the travel and fare class.

I have to find other locations, where the fare class is being shown
Not even in the "View details" overview.

try pricing on cx website xiamen-hkg-sfo return in business class. you probably find dates available for 17k RMB (say 2500 usd) for business class. i believe that is cheaper than HKG-sfO on W or R (upgradable premium economy).

do search for ex-xxx fares (xxx can be any outports) and familiarize urself.