Psychiatrist

This is a great thread!

I guess CX will lose me. Almost 100% of my flights are for leisure travel and paid out of my own pocket. I went up from GR to SL to GO to DM just for the fun of it. I went from a holiday every 3 months to 2 holidays a month to keep up with the DM. I've even done sector runs to keep my DM.

And I get laughed at by bankers and other guys at DM events, when I tell them I love flying and I have to pay out of my own pocket to be a DM. Not to mention I like the shiny DM card and luggage tag. I even get laughed at by senior CX management - "... if only CX had more people like you ..." and "... do you need to see a psychiatrist for that? Ha ha ha ..."

It's already hard enough to maintain DM. And I buy ex-TPE J fares. If it gets more difficult to maintain GO or DM, I will just scale back my flying. And change to other airlines (especially those that offer better food in J - SQ and NH come to mind.)

But to be fair, sometimes I feel like I cheated my way to DM, buying cheap J tickets. At DM events, everybody seems to be flying JFK or LHR ex-HKG longhaul on expensive tickets. Sure, their companies are paying for it, but I do feel I'm a "cheap DM" compared to them. CX doesn't earn that much money from me. I do understand why they want to weed me out. And that's fine. But at the end of the day CX will be getting less money from me. That's fine with me too.

KACommuter

SQ benefits from a very low cost of capital as the financial community assumes there is an implicit guarantee behind them. This is a significant advantage in a capital intensive business.

However, it is more disadvantaged than CX on O/D. HK is one of the world's financial centres so HKG/LHR and HKG/JFK are routes than SIN cannot replicate.

AA_EXP09

And if you do have status with CX, you are likely overseas so often that manufactured spending requires much more time than you have when in HKG.
As for YVR/YYZ, they do have AC flights and AC allows you to upgrade to J class using eupgrades provided there is R space on fares that are comparable in price to CX K class.
(though in my opinion, their schedule is worse and for YVR I will not touch their 77P aircraft.)

Cathay Boy

You know, I was thinking the same thing. After my work scale me back I will do more leisure travels to keep up with DM with my own money, and be a "lifetime DM" sort of doing it.

But we'll see, it's all speculation. Maybe MPO will surprise us and give us a win-win situation where F/J fliers feel getting their money's worth while not destroying what works now.

Finally, it seems like the two pet-peeves of DYKWIAs in here are long priority queue and lounge crowd. I do believe GR should no be given priority queue. Priority check-in is enough for GR tier in my opinion. Also, having a "Titanium" lounge makes sense just so these DYKWIAs can stop whining that they have to sit with peasants.... the horror the horror

MAN Flyer

And Singapore isn't one of the world's financial centre's?. So there will be no finance industry people flying between SIN and LHR?. There is some fabulous nonsense in what is admittedly an interesting thread, but this is up there with the best.

As for O/D, I suppose there isn't a huge list of foreign companies who have their regional HQ in Singapore either.

Keep em coming...^

77W_12A

Singapore is MOST definitely one of the world's financial centers. There's no question about that. It's everything that you listed above.

I think when comparing SIN to HKG, the big disadvantage that SIN faces is geography. Let's take the Kangaroo Route for example. Before the days of EK, I would say SQ would be the airline of choice between Australia and the UK. With the rise of the ME3, DXB, DOH, and IST have become preferable for transit as you can hit more destinations to Europe and beyond.

HKG is better insulated from the ME3 and it's geography is the biggest asset. If you're based in KUL, BKK, SGN, SIN, CGK, etc. and headed to North America, it has a big advantage over SIN. It has the frequency and options that you simply don't have at SIN, for North American flights.

If you wanted to go to North America from SIN out of those destinations I listed, you'd have to go say BKK-SIN-FRA-JFK or BKK-SIN-NRT-LAX.

jagmeets

While SIN is definitely a financial hub, 2 of the 4 banks that I've worked for had a HK setup size that was a multiple of what they had in SIN.
And these 2 are the kind of banks that are much more likely to have the stereotypical high flying banker (think large Capital Markets business etc.). The third had a comparable setup in both places and the 4th (a Singaporean bank), while having a way bigger setup here in SIN, had pretty much nothing by way of US/UK premium class travel.

A quick comparison of JFK/LHR frequencies is telling (admittedly 'similar' between CX/SQ to LHR but CX doesn't get anything near the numbers that SQ gets on the kangaroo route).

SQ couldn't make a single non-stop to JFK last, while CX seems to be doing fine with more than 2x the biz seats (and then some to EWR). Yep, geography at work, but also if there was that much premium O&D demand, shouldn't SQ have been able to sustain at least the one non-stop to JFK?

KACommuter

Singapore is much more of a regional financial centre rather than global. The bankers based there are mostly S.E.A. coverage focused. Expertise for any specific service e.g. M&A or for an industry e.g. consumer goods, high tech, transportation etc. is usually flown in from the Asia Pacific team in HK. As a capital market, Singapore is very small compared with HK so volume of business is lower.

I agree that there are many regional HQ's in Singapore, but many regional managers fly regionally in a mix of Y and J depending on whether their corporate cut-offs are 3, 4, 5 or 6 hours.

KACommuter

Try asking the financiers and bankers. The only segment who will agree to this is wealth management and back office. Everyone in investment banking, trading, equity & capital markets and private equity regards Singapore as a relatively small regional market.

And neither wealth managers nor back office contribute a lot to J/F.

Awesom Andy

That's pretty much on the money, having worked in the small red dot for the past 5 years in the industry.

daniellam

Just a thought...

How about have different qualification/revenue requirements for the various tiers depending on the member's country/region of residence?

Also, award redemption rates for certain types of awards can depend on the member's country/region of residence.

Cathay Boy

Wow, talk about a complicated MPO system. Also, globalization will probably make many people take advantage of it. For example: if CX offers residents in Taiwan easier time to qualify for higher tiers, I have plenty of relatives there to use their address as mine....

daniellam

On an unrelated note (or maybe related), I was once redeeming CX F awards between US-HKG vv. using BA Executive Club miles (Canadian based member).

Their UK call center told me that CX releases more F availability [at least for US-HKG vv] to Canadian point of sales (he had to manually change his computer to a Canadian point of sales to see availability for the flights I wanted as I was calling from Canada and a Canadian BA Exec Club member). I think it might have been mentioned that US members get less availability.

Note: Sometimes I see availability if redeeming through BA Executive Club (as a Canadian member) but not when doing so through AA (as they use the US point of sale).

percysmith

Do something like what ANA does - mail physical cards to claimed address, suspend accounts whose cards get returned.

Of course it won't stop ppl who have "care of" addresses in Taiwan.

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Or - credit according to itinerary start location. But the rules will be really convulated (and will unwittingly encourage ex-TPE!)

chfshifter

Have anyone thought about CX bringing back lifetime status?

As DM are losing quite a few unpublished benefits (seat block, seat redemption from rev seats, fewer in-flight perks) over the past few years, I am quite tempted to credit a huge portion of CX flights to BA instead for next year so as to acquire BA Gold status through flying CX metals - even to the extent that I will only qualify for CX GO.

(If planned perfectly, one can get BA Gold /OWE status with just about 4 ex-TPE CX round trips in J, plus the minimum 4 sectors with BA requirement.)

While this CX GO + BA GO combo is not suitable for everyone, I think I will have almost all I need from this combo - i.e. still getting most of the MPC specific benefits (e.g. seat gaurentee) while still having F lounge/check-in.

The big upside for doing this is that I'll be accumulating tier points for BA GO lifetime status! Given the relatively generous TP bonus for flying J, it is actually not so hard to get life-time OWE status this way.

Now, if CX decides to add back lifetime DM status, then this might be a different story...