I've had some extended before.... I guess best is to email them to plead your case... ideally is J to F, but then sometimes if they are going to expire anyways, using them for PE to business is not the worse idea to save a little bit of money...

Hi all, I have a bit of a rant on bookable upgrades and looking for advice.

Facts:

December 2024 - applied for a bookable upgrade from J to F for LHR-HKG flight in March 2025. Note, this voucher was set to expire in December 2024, however as I understand should have been extended till June 2025 per https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_...e-upgrade.html

I got the response "We've received your request for a bookable upgrade. Unfortunately, we are not able to confirm your request at the moment. And I did subsequently did not get a response within 72 hours.

I flew this leg last week - at check-in was told F was full so voucher was not successful.

Now, with the above, I believe I am entitled to have that voucher re-instated, as, if I had not attempted to use it, expiry would have been extended till June 2025. Using WhatsApp chat and stating my case multiple times, the ultimate response I received was "I am afraid it cannot be renewed."

Although I'm sure not deliberate, it seems a very convenient way to nullify a bookable upgrade - if this had been confirmed or rejected in 72 hours, I could have then re-used it within 2024, or before June 2025 as it would have been renewed.

Do I have a leg to stand on to escalate? And, how would I even go about doing that? And/or, am I just wasting my time?

Adding two data points here:

1. I used a voucher expiring July 2024 for a December 2024 flight, however it came to that I had to change the flight as I could not make original upgraded flight. However via whatsapp and call centre, they have said that if I cancelled the original upgrade, the voucher will be expired, hence I would not be able to use on the new flight. I guess this scenario is exactly the same as you.

2. One of my vouchers was expiring for Jan 2025, I messaged in advance to ask for a week extra to decide how to use, and they ended up extending the voucher to Jun 2025

I guess it just comes down to reaching out before the voucher has been expired to get an extension?

What are peoples' recent experiences with Bookable Upgrades and changes that have been made to the redemption process recently? Having used these for a few years now my sense is that these are becoming more like just redeeming AMs. I guess everyone's own experience sample will be small given the award is x4 per year, but my recent experience is that CX is holding off on confirming BUGs until the last minute whereas previously it would either be confirmed or declined relatively quickly. This seems to occur on flights which are heavily booked (understandable) and those which are less so.

Update on this - even though WhatsApp chat was completely unhelpful, I restated my case using the feedback form on the website. To their credit within 30 hours they'd responded and added the voucher to my account.

It's a bit hit and miss. LHR to HKG J - F was not confirmed even 6 months out. More recently, HKG to LHR PEY - J and YVR to HKG PEY to J initially came back as 'we could not confirm the upgrade', but 3 dyas later both were confirmed.

Bookable upgrade rant
 

As above, if you don't want to read a rant leave now!

I have one bookable upgrade left. I booked a flight ex TPE to BNE. Applied the upgrade to the HKG-BNE leg - all good. Realised yesterday I had booked the wrong day, so I checked the availability of I class on the HKG-BNE leg - 3 available. I even tried making a dummy booking - available. Had to change the flight via the call centre due to the bookable upgrade, but change to a day earlier and applied again for the upgrade .... nada. Rang up this morning and there are "no availability". When I said "but I can see I class availability for a dummy booking" she said "well that's for new bookings only". So - what's the deal? I thought bookable upgrades came out of I class inventory, is that NOT true? I have now changed the flight again to one later the same day which I have been told does have availability..... waiting to see that.

(in the meantime, I cannot log into the cathay website on any browser except safari; I could not pay for my change on any browser except my mobile phone; when I ring up and they send me an SMS with a number.... it comes 6 hours later.... wft Cathay??????).

I could be wrong so please correct me if I am. As you issued ex-TPE tickets, you will need to check I class availability from TPE point of sales and not I class availability on HKG - BNE as a standalone flight. Outport tickets have very limited I class fares especially from origins where the ticket prices are significantly lower (such as MNL and TPE for example) so even HKG - BNE has I class selling elsewhere but if ex-TPE I class has been sold out then your bookable upgrade request will not be accepted. It is frustrating for sure!
My advice would be that you always ask the agent to check bookable upgrade availability first before you change the underlying revenue ticket, then have him/her to change your flight and manually process your bookable upgrade request via the phone. They can hold whilst you settle for the change fee.

My dummy booking was ex TPE (I was trying to figure out if buying biz was better than struggling thru the awful Cathay system).... Actually I might have done so but for the fact that my FLEXIBLE PEY had a cancellation fee!

Sometimes revenue management is set up so that availability is different when working in an active booking from availability for a new booking. Lufthansa is one of the airlines doing this. The underlying idea is to force the customer to upgrade and upsell to a higher booking class. I do not know whether the CX revenue management also uses this algorithm feature, but it is definitely something that exists.

IME, they do. And even for new bookings, booking availability doesn’t necessarily reflect what I see in expertflyer (with the correct PoS). The thing is, it seems to be random (ie, I do not have a clue)- and not a blanket ‘zero lower fareclasses for rebookings’.

I have no idea what philosophy or software sits behind CX’s approach to BUGs but it seems to me these are now not much better than simply using miles to upgrade. It is baffling to have to wait until check in to be granted the upgrade only to step into a cabin which is sparsely booked. This suggests to me whatever the approach, BUGs rank lowly in the overall scheme of things.

It is incredibly frustrating. Usually, with miles, you can see availability and confirm almost instantly. Meanwhile, for BUD, you get told there is availability, issue the ticket, and then sweat for a few days.

I had an experience where PEK was F6 A6, and I had to wait more than 5 days to confirm it! Does revenue have to manually confirm every upgrade?

Given that BY DEFINITION you have to renew DIamond before you even get one of these things (for the Diamond upgrades at least) it seems to me incredible that they think that giving their Diamonds a totally %$#@ feature is a good idea!

Yea, they're clearly making a mistake. (I'm not sure about J availability, but they've clearly screwed F.) On one hand it forces us to buy cash. Maybe some revenue grunt is patting themselves on the back. But it's obviously not smart, when a.) BUDs are by definition for some of CX's most-frequent fliers (and likely to a significant degree, spenders), and b.) the whole BUD system (for F) is more aggravating than appealing. It's never bright to have a perk that gives company negative bang for buck!! In my small circle of anecdotes, guys who fly exclusively F and J (but like using BUDs to save money, who doesn't?), the most common word to describe them is "useless". Nobody is going to want to wait two weeks and roll the dice and see if the upgrade to F clears or not. You'll just pay F and be pissed that you got a worthless phony perk from CX. If this is their approach, I'd rather they just scrap it and find perks they can give us which they're more committed to.

It was a great system at launch (was it 9? 10 years ago), but it really only had 3-4 glory years. Obviously COVID slammed CX from 2020 onwards and then in the post-COVID revival, they've been excruciatingly hard to burn in F. I appreciate the effort but I don't think it's wise they continue them, pretending F is eligible, when really it's a pain in the neck. The old rules were clear: if A is available then BUD is available. Now that's not it, it's opaque. Sucks.

One could say they have way less F capacity now (true), but the PEK anecdote above is pretty ridiculous and goes to show it's not just about capacity cuts.

It makes me wonder if they aren't planning to cut or revamp the system in the coming years.