garykung

PEY is a separate class of service. So its catering, at least for long-haul, is different from Y.

It is simply impossible to do the upgrade like that.

QRC3288

[Adding later: apologies to the fellow I'm quoting, I didn't realize you said pay the full fare difference. My bad!! I totally agree with your point. But will leave my idiocy below, hopefully there's still some sense although I'm arguing with the wind at this point...]

Actually, a lot of airlines DO this! Plenty of budget type airlines, as well as the US big three (technical not budget airlines, but the experience may as well be one), offer either buy on board or upgrades for purchase during check-in.

No, this isn't just free money and this is hands down the most popular yet totally off the mark comment on the blogs and in FT. There is indeed "harm" (aka, less than an ideal revenue capture) in letting customers know they can likely buy a cheapo​ upgrade. The harm is longer term and it comes in the form of pricing power on expensive fare buckets. This will impact premium airlines much more than LLCs and crappy airlines, meaning if you're a crappy airline and your J and F product doesn't have much integrity anyway (whether via angry and hostile flight attendants, bad f & b, hard product, or a combination), then who cares raffle it off.

Same logic applies for award tickets too, for the record. Customers conditioned to getting last minute bizzo or F seats for pennies on the dollar are conditioned not to pay for them.

In the immediate, yes it makes good sense to take the quick money. In the long run, it's a bad/terrible strategy, especially in a market like HKG where disposable income of the frequent fliers is nearly as high as anywhere in the world, or the top (according to data I've seen, THE highest).

A far better strategy, one that US airlines have finally figured out these recent years, is stop pricing J and F into the stupid-sphere and have better yield management that way.

CX hasn't entered that reality yet ex HKG, but they have kinda already been doing it with cheap connecting traffic. But the real long term danger to what CX is doing with its horrendous regional J hard product is that it WONT be able to have the same pricing power in biz they otherwise could. As CX gets crappier, maybe a strategy like the one you suggest is ideal. But if they're a premium airline, no way.

LoveHateRelationship

It would be quite a brilliant move if they did start doing this. Airlines sell a product that essentially goes bad the moment the door closes (i.e. they can't sell it anymore). If they put a value on the higher cabin and have that depreciate throughout the flight, they'd potentially be making revenue where they weren't before. If you want to move up to J on a 13 hour flight after the doors close, they sell it to you with the caveat that you're strictly getting the seat, no extra cabin services etc. As you get closer to arrival, that seat price begins to drop to a certain level until the product is no longer being sold (as the descent begins). Probably not the image that CX wants to portray but revenue is revenue.

I'd imagine you'd have a lot of the people who want to bolt out the door buying up the seats right before descent but you'd also have people half way through the flight buying up the cabin who would want to sleep for a few hours on a lie flat. I would wager that if they sold the empty seats that way, it would probably sell out pretty quickly right after takeoff just because FOMO.

boybi

Actually in this occasion, I was expecting it to be free. And there won't be any problem with catering as I understand that food for Y and PE in regional flights are just the same.

This just came into my mind when I noticed that PE cabin was completely empty. And no PE passenger will be pissed since there's no PE pax to begin with.

sscywong

For regional flight's empty PEY seat, when you reach Diamond you can try ask for it

But be prepared to be identified as one of those DYKWIA DM

Rami Tamimi

Except that this is not how airline business works...

kaka

i know someone she wrestled/sweettalked her way to pe to lhr....

TravelwhileyouEat

If the passenger doesn't mind having Y catering while paying for the upgrade then why not? Again, this is more of wishful thinking than expectation that CX will actually implement this.

TravelwhileyouEat

I agree that anything but a full fare difference upgrade fee will be bad in the long run because people will try to save money as much as possible and this will cause more problems for CX.

Yeah, when the difference between I fares and J fares is 5,000-6,000 USD it does tend to go into the 'what the hell' areas of pricing

leungy18

I think it would be a good idea for CX to offer, right after takeoff, the ability to upgrade to a higher class of service. Fare to be paid is the lowest available fare bucket for that class, with the original ticket refunded.

Austfella

I have seen numerous times in the last six months on a CX A330 (regional configuration) between PVG and HKG where the FAs asked people who had moved to the middle Row 60 D/E/F/G by themselves to move back to their original seat. That's the bulkhead row where the baby bassinets are located (and between the two emergency exit rows). They told these passengers these are "special seats" require additional payment.

I was able to select 60D at check-in not sure if it was because my MP GO status.

In one occasion when I was travelling with my wife and infant, they asked my wife to move back from 60F to 60E (she moved to 59F so she could watch the tv screen as the one 60E was blocked by the baby bassinet - both 60F and G were empty).

Accordingly to the seat plan, these seats are not "extra legroom seats". Maybe there is some unofficial special status about them.

FlyPointyEnd

What happens to tickets if you upgrade them on board? I mean are technically used as soon as you board...I know you can't change anything on your ticket as soon as you do OLCI on CX.

I'm curious as to how other airlines could do it. upgrade to bulkhead or exit rows are easy since you dont need to touch the booking, but EY to PEY or to J might prove to me more complicated.

G-CIVC

BA starts lump-sum discounting before the flight departs (POUG - pro active upgrades - can be months ahead; AUP - airport upgrade). CX does this at outports. But with CX IT, I don't expect it can happen onboard...nor that I want that to happen