Gongzuokuang

I can't follow the entire thread because I can only read English. In your post here I'm not sure if you are comparing CHOICE to STANDARD, or instead trying to calculate the value of the upgrade. In any case, I think the miles are only worth the value you get out of them.

Cathay's devaluation last June might have been OK had they not introduced CHOICE. In the past, I'd get a R/T ORD to HKG for 145K miles. At $7500 USD per ticket, I would value the miles at about $0.05 per mile. Under the new chart, a STANDARD award is 170K miles, making the miles worth $0.045 to me. So FOR ME, it was about a 10% devaluation. I could live with that.

But what really killed it was the addition of the CHOICE program. Surge pricing is an interesting description, but actually I think its worse because they are really cutting back on STANDARD seats. CHOICE is drastically driving down the value of the miles. I'm trying to redeem 2 R/T J from the USA to HK. Those tickets would be roughly $15,000 USD. It's during the holidays, so I'll probably need to redeem as CHOICE, so the value I'll receive will be about $0.03 per mile. A 40% devaluation.

And this notion that they've increased availability by 20% is utter nonsense.

Whether I think the $7500 is a fair price (or whether I'd pay it) is really irrelevant, no? So I guess I'm not sure why you thick we shouldn't value based on the "sticker price".

percysmith

Gongzuokuang

OMG, I cannot imagine paying TAILORED.

I've been gathering data daily for the past 55 days, looking ahead to the holidays. They do offer CHOICE and a few STANDARD seats, but it's pretty hard to predict, and it's much more CHOICE than STANDARD. It's pretty clear that the plane needs to be damn near empty on the weekends before they'll release anything. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are more often the open days. But there some are real mysteries. Consider these two consecutive dates that are 7/8 days out:

DATE 1 (Tuesday) : F2 A2 J9 C9 D9 I9 W9 R9 E9 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V8 S9 N0 Q0
DATE 2 (Wednesday): F3 A3 J9 C9 D9 I9 W9 R9 E9 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V6 S9 N0 Q0 O0

I can look on EF and see that out of the 53 J seats and the 34 PE seats:
DATE 1: There are 28 open J seats (plus the 2 bassinet seats that are normally blocked.) There are 18 open in PE. Percentage open: 56.6% / 52.9%
DATE 2: There are 28 open J seats (plus the 2 bassinet seats that are normally blocked.) There are 24 open in PE. Percentage open: 56.6% / 70.6%

DATE 1: Available as STANDARD
DATE 2: Available as CHOICE

I could understand if one had 25-30 seats available and the other only had 8-9 seats. But here we are a week out with planes that appear to more than half empty in premium seats and they are being stingy with the redemptions.

(And I am aware that not everyone agrees that looking at the load on EF is accurate. I disagree; I think it's accurate, at least in PE/J/F. I think it's a valuable datapoint.)

Anyway, the game is always changing.

VegasGambler

It's not about whether your should value them at the sticker price, it's about whether you really do.

It makes no sense to say that you value two things the same, and then say that you are willing to pay one but not the other. The fact that you are willing to pay one but not the other implies that you attach different values to them. If you really valued then the same, you'd be indifferent about paying one or the other (that's what "same value" means).

percysmith

Duplicated, please delete

percysmith

I burned 10k AM flying to BKK on Standard Y on 29 Oct and 20k AM flying from BKK on Tailored Y on 1 Oct
30,000 x 0.06 = $1,800 < $2,800 which TG was asking for (CX and FD wanted more)

ermen

back in the day you could burn 7.5k avios on this route one way... low availability these days

Kitaka

Very lucky for me, I managed to issue multi carrier award for the coming summer (HKG-FRA with CX in F, BSL - LHR with BA in J, LHR-HND with JL in F and HND - HKG with JL in J). Didn't get the HND-HKG in F but wanted to issue the ticket so went with J.

Other than this, luck ran out for anything else i'd like to redeem....AM getting much more difficult to burn.

christep

But with the fuel tax now of $745 (BKK RT) it's not so clear cut?

triplefives

These fuel surcharges are really stealth mileage devaluation. As an example, HKG/SFO round trip requires $1.3k HKD in cash plus 60k miles??? A cash ticket can go as low as $5.2k so where's the value in trying to earn mileage?

The supposedly increased award availability has been a unicorn thus far.

percysmith

I redeemed as two one-ways. So I was socked for about $700 surcharges anyway.
$2,500 still < $2,800.

alan0801

Corp Travel Owner HK

Hi guys,

I've got to have a rant about this, as it's ridiculous. I'm currently in BKK holding an econ redemption ticket at 1640 tomorrow.

I want to change to business on either 1630, 1640, or 1740. At a push I could also probably do 1510 prem econ, and would be willing to do prem econ on the 1740 flight also.

In our travel agency GDS I am seeing basically 9 seats in all of the classes I want on all 3 flights (9 is the max it ever shows). So in theory I could book maybe 30+ seats right now if I wanted to on these flights.

There is absolutely no point, zero, in calling Asia Miles to discuss, as all they know is what's on the screen in front of them. It would be a complete case of 'computer says no' if I was to call them and try to discuss. I know this as I have done it before, as many of you also probably have.

Anyway, I have checked the availability on both the Asia Miles site and our travel agency GDS about 5 times today, seeing the same results each time.

I have no idea if tomorrow any seats will show as available. I could probably be at the airport two hours before the flights and see the same results!

But actually to make it even more ridiculous, on the Asia Miles site it actually says FLIGHT IS FULLY BOOKED AND NOT AVAILABLE TO WAITLIST next to all of these flights, which is clearly not true.

In a redemption sense I accept that Asia Miles/CX may consider these flights 'fully booked', but I very much doubt that they are going to fill all 3 flights in each cabin between now and then.

I have attached 2 screenshots so that you can see what I mean.

The only way anyone would make any sense out of this would be to know someone personally - such as a friend who is senior management at Asia Miles/CX.
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ermen

it seems to be a system limitation from yonks ago.
once flights are T-2? days or so - cannot waitlist...

IncyWincy

Yet in the past where seats were abundant (or just a few available), there was no need to waitlist. Awards would be available. Now, CX would rather let seats go empty. This may force people to buy tickets , not necessarily from CX but from other carriers too. Yet it will soon convince people that Asia miles are pretty useless.