Unusual Request in Cathay J

[HardieBoys]

Just want to see what others think about this. Just returned home from a four-sector J trip from Sydney to Paris via HK, on CX. Great trip, incidentally. Anyway, at check-in last night, was asked, ever so politely, if I wanted to "volunteer" to move to Y, as they were "heavily overbooked in Business". Absolutely no way, in my case. After boarding, they asked another pax if she wanted to downgrade, but as she'd just flown in from JFK, she also said no way. At which point, we all started talking and realised we'd all been asked to downgrade, the offer being $HK8000 (about $AUD1330) and two Y seats. Given that my ticket cost just over $AUD7000, I didn't think it was fair value. Before take-off, two pax were moved to F.

So we take off, and guess what... there are two empty J seats in our section of 12 (there was another J section behind us, but I couldn't check out the empty seats). One seat next to me is then occupied by staff on rotating shifts, but the other is occupied all the way with a non-staff member.

I'm intrigued? Why would CX make such an offer? Clearly they could've bumped people up to F (it's happened to me once) if they were truly overbooked.

(That all said, had a great trip. Despite the CX bed being not as good as the QF bed, the staff are much nicer and the trip cost roughly $7K, instead of $8.5K on QF.)

 

[aus_flyer]

The only thing I can think of is if J was heavily overbooked (so they started making preparations for dealing with this) but there were last minute no-shows.

 

[HardieBoys]

OK, that's what I initially thought, but why would they persist almost until the doors shut? I mean, wouldn't they just bump the last ones to check in?

 

[NM]

OK, that's what I initially thought, but why would they persist almost until the doors shut? I mean, wouldn't they just bump the last ones to check in?

Maybe they had someone waiting at the gate hoping to get a seat on the flight.

 

[Mal]

a little weird.

Catering issues in F meaning that they didn't want to op anyone up to F unless absolutely neccessary?

people misssing connecting flights that Cathay thought would make it.

etc etc.

 

[traveloguy]

Maybe there were not a large number of Emeralds? CX seems to be more than happy to upgrade OW Emeralds when they are full. I know as I have have had this happen a few times and my partner on even more occasions.

 

[HardieBoys]

The three of us who started chatting about this request were all QFF Platinum, so I don't think it was a case of Emerald Deficiency.