The Asia Miles website shows updated rules for award travel redemption for Premium Economy. I find them both strange and unreasonable.

The strange: Premium Economy award tickets are priced at only 20% premium to regular Economy; for example, r/t HKG-JFK on Economy is 90,000 miles, while PE will require 108,000 miles. This seems to be far below the premium they charge for revenue tickets, and makes it almost a no-brainer to opt for PE for anyone who can spare a few extra miles. Most likely this means we will rarely see award availability in this category.

The unreasonable: It appears as if, starting April 1, upgrades from Economy to Business are no longer possible -- only from PE. This in itself is to be expected. What I find ridiculous is that the award requires the same number of miles as upgrades from Economy to Business today! In other words: you pay 50% or more extra, and still have to spend the same number of miles for an upgrade! On HKG-JFK, for example, PE r/t for April is quoted on the CX site at US$3,500 or so, on top of which you would have to pony up another 80,000 miles to sit in Biz, same as you would today for upgrading a $2,300 (cheapest upgradable) economy ticket. This comes only a couple of years since CX has significantly increased the mileage requirements for long-haul Business awards. The new policy, while not changing the amount of miles required for Biz ticket itself, makes the cost of upgrading to Biz extremely onerous and I believe very uncompetitive compared to other airlines.

The strange and unreasonable: Asia Miles does not show upgrade from Economy to PE as an option in their award mileage chart. Yet, the CX online booking engine shows K and Y/B fares as upgradable in April bookings; now, if you can no longer upgrade from those fares to Biz, and upgrades to PE is not available, what are these Economy tickets upgradable to?...

While the last point may well be an glitch in the recent update to CX's booking system, I am wondering if the bigger problem here is an error of oversight?