Postgres upgrade from 9.4.9 to 9.6 using pg_upgrade error

Hi,

I am planning to upgrade our current Postgres 9.4.9 to 9.6 version using pg_upgrade method to reduce Production downtime. I followed below steps so far,

* Postgres 9.4.9 running on 5432 port.

* Same server, installed Postgres 9.6, its running fine on 5433 port.

* Stop both the Postgres services through pg_ctrlcluster method.

* Running below command to upgrade server.

o sudo -H -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/9.6/bin/pg_upgrade -b /usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin -B /usr/lib/postgresql/9.6/bin -d /var/lib/postgresql/9.4/main -D /var/lib/postgresql/9.6/main -o '-c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.4/main/postgresql.conf' -o '-c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.6/main/postgresql.conf'

*

* I am getting below error while executing above command:

command: "/usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin/pg_ctl" -w -l "pg_upgrade_server.log" -D "/var/lib/postgresql/9.4/main" -o "-p 50432 -b -c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.4/main/postgresql.conf -c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.6/main/postgresql.conf -c listen_addresses='' -c unix_socket_permissions=0700 -c unix_socket_directories='/tmp'" start >> "pg_upgrade_server.log" 2>&1

waiting for server to start....2016-10-18 22:11:30 UTC [13107-1] FATAL: database files are incompatible with server

2016-10-18 22:11:30 UTC [13107-2] DETAIL: The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 9.6, which is not compatible with this version 9.4.9.

stopped waiting

pg_ctl: could not start server

Examine the log output.

Is it possible to upgrade Postgres 9.4.9 to 9.6 with pg_upgrade option or I need to do it through pg_dump only? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ashish Chauhan