Load in premium cabins
 

Happy New Year to all FT-ers, especially CX fliers :) I was on HKG-SIN on the 77A in J (11A of the mini J-cabin) this afternoon, first time onboard the new plane. Flight was overbooked at the back, but very few paid J customers. In fact, many non-status pax were upgraded to J, resulting in an almost full J cabin.

However, the most shocking thing (at least for me) was that there was 0 out of 6 in the F cabin, for this traditionally full New Year Day flight :rolleyes: The signs that hard times are coming for CX? In fact, I was hoping for an upgrade to F if J turned out to be full as well, but, no luck today :)

If they were expecting an empty F cabin for this flight, they should perhaps substitute this flight with a 2-class only regional plane, instead of opting for the new plane? Just wondering.....

As for the other leg I went on, TPE-HKG, it was expectedly full in both Y and J for the A330 regional-config plane. Similarly, there were lots of op-ups for that flight.

Let's see what will the load be in my return flight to TPE on 4th Jan. The first leg to HKG will be on the old 3-class config A330, while the second leg is again another regional 777.

I wouldn't expect planes at this time of year to be busy in premium cabins and definitely not on the routes you are on. It is a leisure time of the year, on routes that would be typically leisure traffic on these dates.

CX doesn't normally fly 3 class planes between SIN and HKG any more, so doubt they even sell F fares.

They used to have 1 flight a day SIN-HKG with a F class (the 18.30 flight) but stopped offering F on this recently when they stopped flying a 744 on the flight and changed to EQV (though usually 777 with old or RBC biz class)

I was speaking t the pursor on HKG TPE tuesday evening. In a loud voice she was saying to all the C class cabin "buy one get 3 seats free", she was obviously in a jolly mood. There was about 8 or 9 passengers in total on the flight. During the flight she was telling me that the yeild is falling fast on HKG TPE and they are now beginning to see it. She told me that as most people in SE Asia work during Xmas this should not reduce too much the yeild. She went on to tell me that the flight I was on is actually going on to Tokyo and this is the only reason they keep it going as they get good traffic from TPE to NRT and they are able to compete with CI and BR on these routes on price which is key to getting Taiwanese to fly with them.

I was on CX 104 from MEL-HKG on Boxing Day. I was the only passenger in first. It was quite surreal - I had my own cabin "Welcome, QF Lad, you are the only passenger in F so you can sit anywhere", my own toilet, and 2 flight attendants to look after me. Except for when I went for a walk around tthe plane (J and Y had reasonable loads), I did not see another passenger. I (almost) felt royal!

Yesterday from HKG - DEL I was one of 3 passengers in J (there was no F cabin).

I know that this is holiday time, but these loads from these 2 flights in the premium cabins are very low.

I was doing a family trip to MNL in late Nov, and my wife and I were the only 2 pax on the whole upper deck for HKG-MNL, served by 3 flight attendants 100% dedicated to the upper deck, on a Sat morning (the return flight was quite full in J though on Sun evening).

and just a week or two ago, on a PVG flight, there's only a couple of pax out of the whole 24-seat J section, while Y is like 80-90% full - a situation I haven't seen for years; for PVG/PEK flights for the past few years it's always much much more difficult booking J seats rather than Y.

the last time I saw this it's SARS - when at that time I found myself often to be the only J pax (or one of the 3 on whole upper-deck J on HKG-JFK served by 3 FA's)...

I took many times HKG-CGK-HKG in FIRST (using an upgrade) and I was the only one flying FIRST.

HKG-JFK CX888 on 01JAN
 

Just got off from CX888 and was lucky enough to be op-uped to F (paid K, miles redemption to U). While talking to the ISM, she says that only about half of the passengers in F and J are those who actually bought F/J tkts, and about 20 people were op-uped (Y->J or J->F) as a result of overbooking in Y(HKG-YVR). In YVR-JFK, I was the only passenger in F, and since this is the first time I try the new CX F, it was a fabulous experience.:)

Well, they still do sell F-fares for my return trip to HKG (priced at S$2,557 one way). On the 4th Jan, they have the morning flight at 9:10am (A333) and the afternoon flight at 4:25pm (A343) with F-cabin.

I noticed that KA cancelled one flight to PVG yesterday.

I just had my flight today Jan 1st HKG-YYZ. The bookings were full from Jan 1st-8th, but then at the last minute there were empty seats left in Y. They didn't give me an op-up.

Just want to ask, is there a difference between check-in in the last minute and check-in 1 or 2 hours before departure when hoping for an op-up?

hope you had a great flight. if you do search on cathay there's now empty Y seats to be sold on almost all days. I think this is due to people reserving seats really early on and then changing dates last minute. that's probably what happened in your case, and the last few Y seats didn't get sold eventually i guess.

Loading are down big time in C and F. They are forecasting at best 50% after CNY. Prices will go down for sure.

I won't bet on it. Contrary to common sense, the CX Management decided to raise price and by A LOT. This was documented on another thread and is widely beleived to contribue to the drop in the premium pax traffic on CX right now. Coupled with serious downgrade on soft products, not many people are willing to go out their way to pay to fly CX F or J these days - I know I definitely won't but just booked NH F yesterday for another transpac. The fact that CX doesn't have a very strong FFP where Marco Polo Club doesn't give generous elite bonus or upgrades, CX really doesn't have many backbones to support during a soft economy like this one. It's no wonder why it is experiencing such tremendous difficulty in filling its front cabins.

Even with the very low loads, they are not releasing seats for award travel. I have been told that to save money on some of the key routes, the will not release J or F space, rather they can save money by flying the plane with 0 in F and few in J, rather than give the seats away for mileage awards. :td:

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? :confused:

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).

Probably not for 1 event, but CX and BA definitely track this and it will be on your record for decades. The TSA tracks people that check in but do not fly; do that too often, and you start having lots of delays at airports in the US and sometimes elsewhere. No idea if they also track tickets purchased (and security check pre-cleared) but not flown, of course this only applies if you're being pre-cleared.

I was in J on 879(Nov) and 870(Dec). Both flights had less than 20 in J. The 870 did not even have any F pax.