DMPHL

Definitely not worth it haha.

FlyFreakquently

How do I know if the flight I'm on will be operated by a 777 from Cathay? I'm booking a flight to Cairo from the US via Doha and the DOH-CAI segment says "First" under the booking code and is operated by a 777W.

Andrew35K

On Middle East destinations business class is labelled as first class - and you’ll get access to Al Safwa. It is still the regular business class seat.

ICPUI

So the easy way would be to book a paid ticket in First, get the award seats after they open up the award space and cancel the original paid ticket after that

DMPHL

Ha! This may be different on the regional routes (which is essentially F nominally when just 2-class)

My experience is mostly limited to the LHR and CDG routes on the A380 where there are 3 classes. Many times I've waited for award space to F to open up, as it's been F8 right up to departure. If it's F8, I guess they aren't going to open the F cabin, plan for F catering, assign cabin crew, just for one or two awards or upgrades. If there are revenue F passengers booked, then it might make sense, as well as if they can oversell J and get some extra revenue for upgrades into F.

But I guess it makes sense, with J cabins as full as they are on those routes, to just not incur the extra cost, and have more cabin crew helping out in J. My guess is it might be same for MLE since it is 3-cabin F (i.e. open it up if there are already paying F customers, or make more room for additional J cash bookings), but who knows!

ICPUI

Im waiting since 2 months for two F-Awards. My flight DOH-MLE is next week but I dont think I get the chance to upgrade. They want 1300$+++ or 133'000 Avios pp for the paid upgrade, thats just ridiculous, a normal upgrade would be 19'000 Avios. I think I will stuck in J.

AM17

If you look at the seat map, there's no business class. Every CAI I can see is the two class economy-first model.