Operational Upgrades for American Executive Platinums?
 

A friend of mine who traveled in 2007 a lot between HKG and SFO on Cathay and who also was an Executive Platinum (Emerald) status was frequently upgraded from J class to F.

I am curious - does anyone else have experience with this? I'm curious about frequency etc. I am flying J next month and have never been in F on Cathay. Just wondering if there's more than a remote chance... and if there's anything I can do to increase my chances (early check in I'm guessing?)

Thanks

Best way increase you chances is to buy up all the other seats! :p

My guess it's not likely for the following reasons:

HKG<->SFO was pretty crowded in 2007 as they only had one flight a day. Now there are two, so there's probably less of an chance that the flights are full.

November (especially the latter half) seems to be pretty low load for CX HKG<->SFO. If you check Asia Miles website, you'll find there's quite a bit of upgrade availability (at least for Y to J).

AFAIK, they don't bump people up for no reason. But I believe CX is pretty good about respecting OW status. A couple years ago, I got an op-up from J to F for a flight within Asia as a AA Plat.

Nonetheless, good luck! Maybe you will be lucky for your flight.

HKG-SFO double daily began 18 Oct 07, so in Nov 07, there are 2 daily flights.

3 main things affecting EXP for op-ups on CX flight

- F capacity went down on B744 and more so on B77A, so cabins are filling up
- I believe in some posts here, op-up priority changed, so that CX Gold are ahead of OW Emeralds, and there are more eligible tiers above Gold
- Are J filling up with this economic crisis?

-repeated-

CX Golds (CX's middle tier) have op-up priority over EMs (per a thread posted last year here), and with the new 74A F capacity is down by three seats. I just flew F SFO-HKG a few days ago, it was the new F so there were 9 seats. Y was oversold but J soaked up the capacity except for one or two, F went out with 8/9 and I think two of those were op-ups, both of who were CX DMs.

Working against you are the reduced number of F seats (12 reduced to 9) if you get the new plane, Diamond and Gold priority over you, and lower J loads. Cross your fingers they REALLY overload J and also have a low load factor in F.

Before they changed the op-up priority, it was pretty standard on this board to see OW pax saying how they were thankful for the op-ups. I haven't seen to many of those lately, although it doesn't necessarily mean causality.

Regarding what you can do: Checking in early will help, because you'll get a lower boarding number. They go by that when ranking people of the same level, with the lower boarding number winning out with equally ranked pax (in your case you're non-CX EM, which is after CX Golds. Above you will be CX Golds and any form of CX Diamond).

WOW - thanks everyone for the great advice (and in one case for making me LOL). Sounds doubtful that it will happen but if it does, I'll come back and let you know.

Thanks again.

I got sort of op-upped this week, and I'm just OW Sapphire (AA Plat), but I'm not sure what it was based on.

It wasn't an op up of a seat I already had. It was rebooking due to the flight I was originally booked on having been cacnelled.

I was booked in U (Business award, through AA) on CX883 this past Sunday night. It was first delayed an hour, then delayed half a day, then cancelled. It took a lot of patient hanging around the special booths they'd set up at TBIT in LAX for handling rebookings to find out what would happen to me. (I was waiting patiently since there was nothing I could do on the phone, or over at AA, since AA was showing the ticket already used due to me cheking it, and AA wasn't seeing the flight as cancelled, and AA couldn't get Cathay on the phone at that hour "no answer presumably because it's the middle of the night in Hong Kong".) When I got to the front of the line finally, first the agent thnked me for being so patient and then went, "oh, business" (I had a pretty good idea there were no seats in business). The agent went over to the supervisor at the next atation, and came back asking "is it ok if we put you in First Class on a flight going out tomorrow night?". :)

And so they did. They knew I was "U" class (she said "U" at some point while pulling up my ticket info), and it said Sapphire on my boarding pass so they knew that too, but whether those were facotrs or whether they were just trying to get everyone out no later than a two-delay any way they could, I don't know.

Btw, hours after this happened ot me, ExpertFlyer was showing J9 on CX881 Wed 15 Oct 1:45 am (the flight I'd been rebooked on). I suspect, though, that it was a case of EF not having gotten updated information yet about all the bookings they'd made at LAX that afternoon. (By the time I checked again almost a day later, it was all 0'd out in all buckets.)

CX Upgrade chances
 

I am an AA EXP. Travel a lot to LHR and routinely get upgraded. My company will only allow economy tickets given the current financial atmosphere. I am traveling from SFO to SIN via HGK and back.

What are the chances of getting upgraded on the SFO to HGK and HGK to SFO flight. Almost all the coach seats are taken on both flights

I had to argue with corporate travel to let me take CX as the ticket was $1400 vs United at $1050. :mad:. I .....ed that UA only had center seats and finally corporate travel relented. I'd like to see them travel 19 hours in a coach center seat. It's always the ones in cubiles making these rules while those of us who generate the revenue to pay these boneheads who suffer

But I digress, I never have traveled on CX and will be going the Sinpagore 3-4 times a year now. is it a 1 in 5 chance of getting upgraded, 50/50, just how screwed am I???????????????????????????:confused:

Welcome to FlyerTalk, Americanaddict. Next time it would help if you scroll down a page or two to see if something similar has been asked, or if you can do a search.

As there is a similar thread to yours posted recently, I am merging the two together. See the posts above yours for answers to your questions.

Thank you.


Guy Betsy
Cathay Pacific Asiamiles forum co-moderator

The chance is not good. CX only op-ups when overbooked. SFO-HKG Y is not often full these days. Even if it is overbooked, there are enough people getting mileage upgrades that op-up chance is very slim these days.

As AA EXP, you can get seat assignments ahead of time.

if I were you...I actually might consider getting comp to 1P on UA first (to get 100% bonus miles), and fly UA for these ? and with 3-4 trips to SIN a year, plus some leisure travel, you can get to 1K which would give you 6 SWU's the next year, which you can use to upgrade all the way to SIN (and if 6 = 3 roundtrips not enough, you can upgrade the rest with miles)? (I assume they won't comp to 1K).

and with UA, you have E+ which gives you a few more inches of pitch vs. CX there's no such thing...with Y these few inches might actually be quite important.

another option if you want to stick with AA, have you checked AA to SIN via NRT ? so USA-NRT on AA metal which you can upgrade with your VIPOW, and NRT-SIN a short flight in JL/AA-codeshare in Y (and I personally like JL Y more than CX Y - but it's the experience from a few years ago) - I think the food is nicer in JL Y and the pitch better. and JL gives the same 100% AAdv elite bonus, right ? if so I won't necessarily only stick with CX for Y...

I used to fly UA before I switched to CX. UA's leg room is good for EY+. The IFE is poor. Services - ummm, what services? Back then, I could get 100% bonus, extra leg room, and the seat next to me blocked. These are the things I missed. Definitely that is a choice besides CX (and SQ).

I was surprised that UA is less expensive than CX. UA is normally the most expensive of the three airlines operating direct flights. You can get CX (at least CX879) for less than USD1000 now. Most flights have low fares available these days (until December).

NRT-SIN is not a short flight. Certainly better than SFO-HKG in Y, but still not short.

I second that, especially on JL 777 in Y. That must have the smallest seat pitch I've ever done for so many hours. Awful!