First Class Upgrade Miles Redemption
 

I have a confirmed revenue booking in Business Class, and I wanted to upgrade one of the flights to First Class with Asia Miles.

I checked on the CX redemption website, and it showed that there was 1 First Class seat available for direct redemption.

However, when I called the Marco Polo hotline, the staff told me that I have to waitlist for the upgrade, while she also told me from her system, direct redemption was available.

Previously, I thought that as long as there are seats for redemption, you can redeem an upgrade reward.

Anyone knows how does upgrade redemption work? Is this situation normal? Or did they make any new changes to the redemption policy? Thanks!

Similar thing happened to me but with a PEY -> J upgrade. Specifically chose that flight as I saw award space, but staff told me award space and upgrade space are different, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Her advice is to call about upgrade space before making a booking since there is no way to check online apparently :rolleyes:

Full award space has always only been a good indicator of upgrade space. They have never been 100% the same, at least in the past couple of decades.

Definitely agree availability of full redemption ticket is a good indicator but not 100% reflective of mileage upgrade availability. I can recall at least two datapoints that shows it could go either way:

- Attempted Y+ to J upgrade for HKG-YVR around 2016. Saw on CX.com redemption tickets for J were available but MPC hotline agent told me no upgrade space available. Upgrade finally confirmed at check-in counter.
- Recently attempted Y to J upgrade for HKG-HKT. CX.com showed redemption ticket available and sure enough the call agent was able to confirm the mileage upgrade for me.

I have same experience where my upgrade was confirmed at check-in or lounge with the leftovers from redemption pool.

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I had similar experience but another way around for upgrading PE to J as I couldn’t find the award seat for the J and decided to waitlist for it, after contacting the customer service personnel told me that there was availability to upgrade immediately. I am not sure whether my CX Gold helped.

Is milage redemption availability the same as the mid-tier upgrade certificate availability? I recently got declined from J to F.

It is definitely not. CX recently has been doing all they can to shut down any usability of these bookable mid-tier upgrade certificates by harshly zeroing out the applicable revenue buckets (A, I etc) altogether and just lowering fares for the fare classes above them. Mileage redemptions mean $ to CX from their accounting / revenue perspective, but loyalty means zilch. Such sad state of affairs.

I had the same issue recently. I booked a revenue J class flight from ICN-CDG via HKG, both sector in J class, I saw a seat available in First class to upgrade and called the hotline and turns out that I’ve been put on the waitlist.

Sigh, it just sounds non-sense to me :(

think it could be due to married segment?
have you tried searching for FCL award availability on ICN-CDG?