CX also denied BA gold to CX Silver. If I have CX silver, will be flying a couple of J to hit gold but hate that I have to restart from base. So just Y for now for those short haul intra Asia flight

I flew PVG-HKG several times last year. exPVG Eco flex (S/O/N/Q) is about sub 2000 CNY for a round trip with staying time >48h , which gets 40sp. Where J/C charges you about 9000CNY for 80sp.

Mid tier for rollover makes 0 sense to me. That is just a giving members the middle finger. If it’s DMP in exchange for the mid tier benefits, it depends on how you value the DM nomination, HK phone line, unrestricted lounge access etc.

The idea is nice but I can already foresee setting the bar at 2400 for a new hypothetical tier.

As for the BUDs, it is as valuable as F availability. The number of 77As will be reduced to 10 whilst we wait for new planes. At the moment, F is the only cabin constantly full on 251/252.

Maybe that's their hidden agenda - taking away BUDs when their value drop to a low point thus facing the smallest opposition, so that when 779X enter service the whole F cabin wouldn't be occupied by DMs who use BUDs.
At that time even if DMs start to appreciate the benefit of BUDs CX would never offer them again.

I remember you mentioned before that your 1600s are unusable. The issue with BUD is both the lack of 77A and award availability. They would sell A class with the entire F empty but refuse your coupon. When I had the gold coupons ages ago, I was denied using them for PEK! I am not buying an R fare ticket to pay the lottery either.

But the 1800 nomination is a slam-dunk benefit for members. I am debating whether 16/1800 is worth it or if should I just leave it at 1100 and retroclaim.

only because I wanna try out First class. If I'm willing to use them on W->J it should be easy!

by the way, do you find the DMP offering attractive?

back in the day my boss got DM by flying Y return every week.
sadly those days are gone...

I think W to J is still not a good value proposition. Even if you use all the ex-outport tricks, R is much more expensive than E. You also risk not clearing the BUD. For the cost of R, I could have purchased miles and redeemed J outright.

As for DMP, I was told by loyalty that I am not the target segment and I cannot benefit enough from the benefits. I am not in HKG airport weekly. Of course, the DM nomination would be nice. But the RM or unrestricted use of CX lounges is not something that I need. Also, I wouldn't hit 2400 without ramping up my frequency. I am happy being a bog standard 1200, the incremental benefits do not entice me. I'd rather play the field and try other airlines.

I suspect the above is aligned to what CX would have found out from customers - bookable upgrades are too complicated to understand, availability is too limited and the value isn’t great.

From their perspective, why not formalize a “loophole” that makes the program easier for everyone to understand while getting rid of something that only a few (relatively speaking) can be bothered to take advantage of? At the same time, they can cut revenue leakage (for those that manage to use the bookable upgrades), reduced F capacity, etc.

Formalising the carry-over only works if there is a new carrot. If you take away the previous rewards in exchange for something already achievable, you are just downgrading the programme. There needs to be another carrot.

Using something they poorly designed themselves as a justification for removing mid-tier benefits is an insult.

I don’t think that I’ve ever had this issue if there was A availability for the Point of Sale of the ticket I was trying my to upgrade. Always for HKG-North America, with a myriad of PoS’ over the years.

I’m unsure whether there is a correlation.

But life would’ve been much easier had the unlimited ticketing isn’t removed. We had the flexibility to change to a different flight when cheap fare classes are available.

It does feel that every year something is being removed from the programme.

Overall, I agree with many points raised by frequent posters above, but broadly come to a different conclusion.

I think CX has made a strategic decision to extract value from MPC (instead of outsourcing inherent value to partner OW program), which is good for us loyal CX frequent fliers.

For example, CX has decimated partner availability, in premium classes at least. Meanwhile, I've noticed a big change to awards, at least for how I use them (premium cabins only, last minute): a lot more award availability!

I've also noticed another appreciated change: tighter seat blocking, but easily and quickly making it available to DMs.

I always believed CX had massive latent potential. It's the aspirational actual product that AA, BA, maybe QF and others would prefer to use. Then you have Alaska, a brilliant arbitrage program that had the unintended consequences for many years of making everyone figure out how to get CX J and F on the cheap cheap. OW partners had somehow convinced CX executives that distribution aka the huge captive customer base of AA/BA/AS etc. loyalty members, was something CX badly needed, so it was still worth it for CX to cough up CX's obviously better product in exchange for massive distribution of cheap incremental seats (or CX/MPC/Swire was just asleep at the switch at all the value they were giving up for years). But that has clearly changed. and guess what? It's pretty obvious that was all a bluff by AA/BA/AS. Just as airlines aren't super loyal to us, we're not super loyal to them either. People are about to leave BA in droves. When a company makes such a change, people look around and see the alternatives and do the hard cost/benefit analysis. The onemile guy, Lucky or something, just has a post that he's leaving AA EXP after a long time.

Guess what? In an era of extremely fungible credit card points, the loyalty program with the competitive advantage is the one with the aspirational product like CX.

What is an obvious way for CX to further enhance the MPC program? By making benefits for SL GO and DMs incrementally better than what you'd get if you were a OW or partner with CX. The low hanging fruit is award availability and seat blocking, neither are promised as OW benefits to partners and both obviously have a lot of value. CX can make more money and have a lot more control by being the "fed" themselves (instead of farming that points central bank role to AA, BA or AS). The bottom line is selling points is lucrative and CX has been leaving a lot of money on the table, IMO (not to mention working capital benefits) by farming out redemptions to partners. I see them improving MPC, at least from my perspective, "enhancements" of the last 12-24 months haven't cut value for me, I think they've added it.

One last comment on the BUDs. I think they're a really great program. For me, like others they've lost a lot of their value because there is so little F availability and I generally buy J or F fares (although I have purchased a few economy fares in the last few years with family!). But I'm like the posters above who think/hope this is just a temporary reduction. And I also like the 1,800 benefit, I've given it to Mrs. QRC a few years when she needed it, or to staff as an incentive. There are some rough edges to the program that could be ironed out like rolling over SPs and hard resets and the like, which hopefully will be addressed. Overall though I think we're in a unique position to maybe see value accrue to us as loyal CX MPC members, while other programs that have been over-earning for years (AA, BA, etc.) are likely to continue to see the value proposition drop. The Mid-Tier Benefits program has definitely encouraged me to keep flying CX at least to get to 1,800. I am also something of a free agent flyer, it's true my flight budget/annual flying allowance is quite a bit above 1,800 SP equivalent, but CX is capturing more of my budget by having this Mid-Tier Benefits program than they would otherwise I think. So it's not a stupid program, maybe they could just expand on the idea.

Of course, the big benefit those now-disgruntled / screwed over AA and BA flyers got wasn't immaterial - they got to earn zillions of points, many of which were redeemed very favorably on CX. So they got a lot of value. Unfortunately the value they extracted was more in the past, where ours might be more in future (provided you stay a CX elite).

Was surveyed If I would exchange 1600SP BUD for SP rollover. I would definitely not make the trade. The 1600 and 1800 SP mid tier benefits do keep many going for CX after the 1200 threshold - and I reckon this is a group of loyal customers and CX should let such budget go so easily!

I can certainly see myself more on SQ, BR, AF if they made such changes. DM+ is not practical for most of us here. What can you actually get out of it?

Post-plague has seen a boom in premium leisure travel on cash tickets and airlines have been taking advantage. If Cathay makes the potential changes discussed above (which at this point is pure speculation) it will be making the same mistake as BA and others, of taking legions of high-volume but relatively low yield flyers (both business and leisure) for granted only to discover, come the next big demand downturn that it has lost loyalty it built over years. Classic mistake - and disappointingly tacky - but understandable given the dichotomy of "loyalty programmes" (from our view) and "profit maximisation" programmes (from the airlines').