My proposal:
1 or 2 SWU certs for DMs annually.

My reasoning:
CX is going to lose MPOs, aka people who may steer discretionary business CX's way.
1.) Good opportunity to win back business and show how CX isn't as indifferent to its elite pax as it was in 2007-2008. I know two DMs who are losing it this year, and neither of them care because "it means nothing anyway." Hmmm.
2.) Good opportunity to stick it to SQ. SQ hollowed PPS, I think partially on the assumption SQ was just plain awesome (indeed partially true) and also on the flawed assumption that the world economy would not see de-leveraging like it did. In essence, the days when airlines no longer competed just on price point and business customers would perpetually pay more for a superior J product were before us. It will take time for SQ to realize this and then redo PPS to be more customer-friendly...so now is CX's chance to steal business customers, people paying full Y and J fares.

The guaranteed ISM greeting isn't going to make me go out of my way to schedule something else and ensure I fly CX. For me, one of the reasons I don't give all my revenue to CX (now that it seems service is improving again) is because some of the benefits decline in value in a down economy, aka guaranteed J seat and op-up. I like flying SQ's J, and the slant of LX's or Qatar's J that isn't bad enough to reschedule my final meeting at a CX destination instead. However, I might be more willing if I knew I had one or two SWU certs left, and I could possibly score a J-F upgrade. I think getting to sit one class higher is really something people would go out of their way for, especially since with CX there really is no other way except to pay a lot of $$$ or miles, or get lucky with an op-up.

They could not guarantee anything until departure time, do whatever it takes to make it as unobtrusive as possible to CX. Is this the slippery-slope down the path of US airlines quality? I don't think so. There is so much more competition in the US coupled with a higher cost structure that I think CX could maintain the integrity of the premium cabins they're looking for, while giving a very valuable incentive to their top fliers.

As a DM, I like it. If I am part of CX mgmt, I may think otherwise. It lowers the values of the premium cabins, and CX may have to distinguish between different types of DMs.

However, CX can make that an undocumented benefit to reward certain members at its discretion. That may keep the preimium cabins more occupied and retain the loyal members when time is bad.

I'd almost prefer that they just gave top tier flyers bonus Asia miles.. e.g. DM's earn a 30% bonus on miles flown.

Mileage is more flexible but is more a liability to the airline.

there could be some variations to this that I could think of, but of course might make it more complicated than necessary:
- 1 for qualifying/re-qualifying for DM; 2 if qualify/requalify early (e.g. within 6 months instead of 12)
- 1 more for every 20k Club miles above 120k within the membership year (would only matter for requalification - because for first-time qualification you won't get to do this)

I'm just thinking from my perspectives - having had 85k Club miles earlier this year in 2-3 months, I just completely didn't fly CX / credit to MPO any more the past few months because I'm working on my AAdv / LH accounts. but if there's extra incentive for me to requalify early, or to go for more above 120k, then I would re-consider...

well, I know there's DM+, but there's no really clear target to aim for - I don't know when I'll be top 1% DM in terms of revenue, I don't even know what revenue I have to CX after all the revenue allocation on RTW tickets, agent commission, etc. and a year or so I thought I was close to the revenue target (a very rough guideline given to me unofficially by a senior CPLP person), then I was told because economy/business was so good that year that the threshold of top 1% was much higher than before now etc - basically, really no way I can "plan" for it unless I really give everything to CX, which I'm reluctant to do because I don't even know if I'll get it if I do so.

And, frankly, besides more op-up (which I'm somewhat interested in but not always useful anyway), DM membership for someone else (which I don't think I will give to my wife because if she travels it's with me always anyway, and I need to find someone to give it to), invitation to more events (which aren't too interesting anyway), F-lounge always even when not flying oneworld (but I always arrive airport 40-50 mins before departure anyway)...DM+ doesn't seem overly too useful anyway. I'd rather have some bonus miles or SWU...

I think this is a very good idea, I'm in a similar position to you that I have a ton of miles early in my qualifying year, and so I switch as much as possible to other airlines (I have been giving everything else to Star carriers boosting my UA account, but given what you and a few others do I'm also going to start banking miles to AA when I fly CX). There is no incentive to fly CX over the 120k mark.

You also get suite upgrades in certain hotel chains. Free nights at Peninsula HK in a suite and some other hotel privileges which I find rather useful. You also get a dedicated person attending all your travel needs. A buggy cart on arrival and transit. Found that out when I travelled with a DM+ passenger on my HKG-JFK sector. If you have DM+, it's really useful.

I absolutely hate the idea of SWU. Cheapens the premium cabin too much. If CX introduces SWU, I would definitely stop flying with CX in their premium cabin.

I can't stand the US legacy carriers...so I would also be concerned about it, but I really think you wouldn't notice. If you gave every DM who re-qualified one SWU, you're looking at 10-20k maximum SWU's per year for CX. On a sector basis, CX has nearly 2k flights to/from JFK alone annually, over 2.5k flights to/from LHR, add in LAX, SFO, YYZ, YVR, CDG, AMS, JNB, SYD, Auckland, DXB, you get the idea. There are tons of long-haul destinations where DMs could use a Y-J or J-F upgrade.

I'm also not proposing guaranteeing the upgrade a few days in advance like UA...CX could make it as advantageous to them as possible, like only cashing it on checkin. As tedhl mentioned in his post, I think it would be a good incentive to keep people flying CX after they hit the 120k mark. I will hit probably 120k miles, doing it primarily recently on J and F long-haul, in 2-3 months after my qualifying year starts. I know I would have a greater incentive to stay on CX if I could obtain something useful after hitting say 140k or 150k miles, or re-qualifying 6 months early, or something like that. A SWU is a great way to do that, especially now that J cabins are really empty.

It is harder to obtain CX DM than the US counterparts (which would be the natural argument against SWUs, considering how bad and full the premium cabins always are on the US legacies), and there are already far fewer miles to obtain in AM.

Well, good riddance

well, despite what I said above, I agree that I'm also somewhat concerned about the "cheapening" of the CX premium cabins. so, I can understand the status quo of MPO/AM being one of the least-generous FFPs around and there's not many "freebies" to even the highest tiers.

but, what I wanted to say was, then CX needs to understand the compromise - with the status quo of the FFP it only serves the purpose of encouraging loyalty to a certain extent; beyond which people MIGHT start to divert their business to somewhere else. I said "MIGHT" because maybe the samples here on FT are biased and we're among the minority, many DMs I know actually have a hard time understanding all the basics of only the CX program itself already, not to mention about maximizing further values coming out of all their flying - e.g. many of them thought that the CX AmEx is the best card in town to earn Asia Miles !!

so, maybe the status quo is indeed a good balance for CX as a whole - encouraging loyalty to a certain good extent without cheapening of the premium cabins. I think they should have the most relevant data / customer understanding to make the best balance. but I guess handing out some (a small amount) of SWUs (esp if very selectively) wouldn't hurt their premium image too while helping encourage loyalty/goodwill. in fact, if I remember right, in the early 90's before the time of Asia Miles / new MPO, in the old MPO upgrade certs annually were actually part of the benefits for Lifetime members, or maybe DM too, don't remember exactly.

on the side, in fact I think CX also benefits from AAdv being a generous program too - while I credit to AAdv after having enough for CX DM, most often I actually still fly CX/KA quite often, and so while MPO/AM isn't getting my business, CX as a whole still is, so maybe that's good enough for them. but, of course, in that case I don't necessarily need to stick with CX/AAdv - but often go with Star/SQ/LH/etc as well esp when the schedule/prices make much more sense...

CX already has unofficial SWU in place...and they are actually better than SWUs. For Diamonds, whenever you request a miles for upgrade or a full redemption, CX will do all they can to clear the redemption for you. They are only restricted on the JFK flights - and that restriction has probably also been lifted in the current climate.

So you basically get unlimited SWUs, you just need to use miles for them. As others have mentioned, if I was still a Diamond, I would appreciate bonus asia miles instead of a SWU.

I'm not sure issuing a few Upgrade Certificates to DMs will "cheapen" the premium cabins. Remember anyone with enough Asia miles can buy a redeption ticket.

The benefit of Upgrade Certificates to the airline is they typically expire within a year and, as someone has already pointed out, they are not counted as a liability.

Maybe a one-off "thank you" for those requalifying this year would be appropriate

I'm just a lowly SL but I agree. Throwing around DMs just cheapens the top-tier elite and will force Cathay to discriminate within the services to DM members. In a way they are already doing that based on the posts here. DM and DM+ are treated like royalty, DM Invitational not (purely based on what I read here.)

Maybe a middle ground is that I can see Cathay make DM a two-year membership. When someone tries his ... off to earn 120,000 miles a year, he gets DM benefits for 2 years instead of one. I think that will entice a lot of people. Then, all you need to do is fly 180,000 miles within those two years to keep that DM membership. I think it's a good middle ground.

But of course it's not like any CX management is reading this and will implement my ideas...

I think this proposal will cheapen the CX experience much more than SWUs...at the end of the day, DM should be viewed from a revenue perspective from mgmt, not from the perspective of casual customers who aspires for DM but it doesn't add more real value to them other than the "wow" factor. People doing mileage runs in discount Y and achieving DM are not high revenue value. CX should do everything they can to target (in my opinion) full-fare Y and J customers, who would appreciate the value of SWU, especially now that more businesses are going to fly people full-Y instead of J. My thinking is if you give mileage run or aspirational DMs two years of DM, after possibly throwing as little as 7-10k USD to CX, that's a huge waste from CX's point of view and dilution of the DM program.