I have actually found that the first class award availiability is fairly good from HKG to SFO.. It is, however, bad from HKG-LAX and HKG-JFK...

Bad, it is next to impossible, they simply don't release the HKG-JFK F seat to awards, ever. OK, maybe once in a blue moon. Not sure why they do this since the F cabin on this route is genrally empty or full of op ups.

Nope, they do. I once redeemed such award on the new 77A's new F suite not so long ago, JFK-HKG. You need to wait till closer to the departure date. And if you are using AAdvantage miles however, it's possible you need to arrange a trade with someone using Asia Miles in order to get it since CX sometimes reserve their award availability for their own members only.

Because if it's empty then the cost is minimal (no catering, probably one or two less crew), and if it's full of op-ups then they are getting, in effect, J-class revenue for those seats which they obviously value more highly than miles. CX sells AsiaMiles at about US$0.01, so for them an F reward HKG-JFK RT at 220,000 miles is only US$2,200. There are probably passengers in Economy paying more than that!

You can waitlist for First class award using Asia Miles anyway so CX does care about filling their front cabins. I think the poster in question is complaining about not being able to use AA miles on CX. I have seen that before but that's one of the few benefits of keeping & earning a handsome balance of Asia Miles / Marco Polo Club or else a lot of people would have moved to AAdvantage.

Sure you can waitlist, but if the cabin would otherwise be empty my expectation is that CX would simply not clear you off the witlist (unless you are Diamond) - they would rather fly with it empty and save cost than have to staff and cater it for a revenue of, in effect, US$1,100 (one way) on which they would make a loss.

Well, I am not sure this is the way that they work normally but what is there to prevent 3~4 of your friends to book themselves in full F on that flight and cancel it less than 24 hours before the flight? Surely, they would have to prepare for the catering (order sent) + staff (personnel called) for the flight already and there is a "sudden" cancellation. So what do they do? My guess is they rather take the payment from you in miles because the they already spent 4X times the cost to prepare for 4 F pax who did not show up and with all the meals and staff already in place and J cabin is not oversold - it would be illogical for them to not clear the list.

True, but you'd need to buy 4 * F tickets and then refund them (US$100,000 out of pocket for a couple of months) and CX actively calls F customers to confirm that they are actually planning to fly. And you might get away with it once, but then you'd be blacklisted.

Not sure if it's a couple of months, that's debatable. My experience is airlines tend to process refundable fares within days and usually take no more than 2 weeks, and thus normally within the same CC billing cycle.

Must be a HKG practice and quite annoying if you ask me. I never had an airline calling me prior to my flight on a paid F or J ticket. At best, I'll get an e-mail telling me online check-in is available but aside from that, if CX does that, I'll get really annoyed. But then, like stated above, I have no plan of buying CX F tickets, no AONEX and no plain vanilla F either. So long as SQ, NH and JL exist and well; CX is very far back on my list. Besides, except SQ, CX is so much more expensive than most other carriers so on the price alone, it's a big enough turn off.

Doubtful, it's virtually impossible for them to trace back to me - not that I plan to do any such thing. But if I were, I'll make sure the circumstances and the people doing it cannot possibly bear any apperant connections to me (i.e. no same last name, not all from same place or same time or same credit card). And I won't do it when their F cabin is absolutely empty either, that's just unethical. But your point is well taken, a junior person doing this may get himself/herself burned / blacklisted fairly quickly.

not sure how some of you come up with these costings

US$0.01/AsiaMile is pretty much an industry standard - I got the figure personally from a previous head of CPLP at a CX event. US$25,000 is (more or less) CX's standard FRT fare HKG-JFK (+ taxes I think).

The load for CX690 (SIN-HKG on the 3-class 333) today:
1/8 in F
10/32 in J (including a veteran TVB actor). The back J cabin was occupied by 2, while in the front cabin, almost everyone had an empty seat next to him/her, except for one couple.
I didn't check the load for Y, but I suspect it was not full either.....

The holiday season allways has very low load in premium cabin. I travelled HKG-JFK; HKG-LHR; HKG-SYD and HKG-CDG in December (My body tells me that it is crazy). Loads were 50% in F for JFK; 100% in F for LHR (actually waitlist); and full to very heavy in J for SYD; 50% in F for CDG. Was quite suprised by the heavy loads.

They'll blacklist customers who cancel F bookings at the last minute one time?

I've had a dozen different airlines call circa 24 hours before flight to reconfirm -- including CX in US. But it was always for a flight that was very full; in retrospect they were trying to predict upgrade space in order to fill the flight 100%. Even AA has called me to reconfirm so this is hardly unique to CX or related to service levels. In HKG I always ask my hotel concierge to reconfirm the flight (it does wonders for hotel service sometimes).