How odd!
I have to say if they don't honour this that will be an almighty F up on their part. No get out in the T&C's. Incredibly easy MCOL.
I encourage anyone who got an email today to take them to MCOL. They'll deserve it. This is outrageous.

I'll keep you all updated.

Tried again this morning and booked first time. £329.31 in total and it let me add my BA status, so I got to choose decent seats for free.

Seems to was just a glitch and poor customer service.

flyuk What seats did they let you select? I'm BA Gold but could only choose regular seats within the cabin.

Any seats in economy. I got 59A and 59K. Did you add your BA number to the booking or your newly created Cathay one?

By the way, it books into O class, so no TP or Avios. You do get full status tier benefits though. I have 3 X hold luggage and free seat selection in all of Economy.

Found the problem..... I entered my number incorrectly!! "Your frequent flyer programme number appears that to be incorrect. Please update it"

I'll give their helpful staff a message to get it updated - need to bag those extra legrooms!!

No, it's not binding. I dipped in and out of the booking process a few times as a friend of mine had won a ticket too, so needed to run a few date choices by him.

Ticket costs were £293 for taxes and charges; we're flying from Manchester.

It sounds like they might have gotten the UK promo mixed up with how the NA/French promos were run? Those promos had a code where you needed to fight to book. I suspect this might just be poor CS (and poor CS understanding) at hand.

I thought that too. They all had the same code but we all have different ones.

Glad to hear it worked out!
Clearly just bad communications and a technical error.

Are these tickets upgradeable with Asia Miles? What sort of award availability would I need in PE - I'm pretty flexible on dates so would be keen to book flights that I can upgrade on.

Terms and Conditions in a PDF document linked from the offer page https://flights.cathaypacific.com/en...f-winners.html say in section 6As:

I've won a RT trip as well. Flexible on travel dates but would like to upgrade using Asia Miles if possible. Any tips on how to find flights with upgrade availability before booking?
Also, I suppose we can only upgrade from Economy to PE, not to Business?

Thanks!

I was in the same position as you, but I think I've now screwed up. I tried doing the "put booking on hold, speak to upgrade people, confirm bookings" approach outlined in the Wiki on this thread (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...on-thread.html), but the phone agents (3 separate ones) all told me that wasn't possible. Instead they said I should just check availability online, make the cash booking for flights where there is availability, and then process the upgrade afterwards. So I did, but now I've ended up with my upgrades waitlisted, even though the availability is showing to make a new award booking in Premium Eco, and I now have 44,000 Amex points stuck in my Asia Miles account unless the upgrades clear.

Still trying to figure out what exactly is going on, but my best guess is to ignore any award availability that says "just a few seats left" - this seems to actually mean "no upgrade availability". On my flight dates, the only flight that the phone agents can see for an upgrade is the one without the "just a few seats left" tagline. So I reckon if you book flights that don't say "just a few seats left", you might actually be able to upgrade with miles. And although the ticket is free cancel within 24 hours, apparently the World of Winners code cannot be used on an alternative booking if I cancel the first one.

Good luck!

Does anyone know the rules for rebooking dates? The faq just mentions 250gbp subject to availability. I have been messaging customer service and they don't seem to have a clue about any additional charges / fare difference. They said there is a fare difference component but couldn't answer how this may be calculated.

The T&C mentions:
H. Rebooking of the travel date is subject to a rebooking fee of GBP 250.00 per transaction.
l. The Ticket offer holder is responsible for all taxes and surcharges applicable to the tickets

It doesn't mention fare difference but the C's rep insists it will be charged even though they can't say how it will be calculated.