Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - KA 897 cancelled both today and yesterday...

I was booked on KA 897 PVG-HKG back home tomorrow...but my wife told me earlier (while checking the on-time performance of this flight these few days) she found that this flight is canceled both today and yesterday.

Given this is the 19:30 flight while they have one 18:30, one 19:00, and one 20:30...do they intentionally cancel this flight every day (and the corresponding inbound to PVG of course) when the load is light, and combine with another flight? To avoid being bumped to 20:30 tomorrow arriving an hour later, or arriving at the airport early and yet found 19:00 to be full in J already (only J1 left now)...I just changed to 19:00 first for the peace of mind. I have suffered enough delays to/from PEK/PVG these few days already...

but any idea if it's indeed the case that this flight is canceled very often (I can only see these 2 data points now on ka.com) ? I asked MPO agent just now when I was changing the flight, whether there's an reason about the cancellation, she checked for a while and said there's no specific reason there, just saying that the flights were canceled and pax protected to other flights...

Yes KA does regularly cancel flights because of light loads and more recently because of a shortage of pilots. Add today's cost of fuel to the economic equation it just gives them more and more commercial justification to do it.

I have observed KA has exercised this practice to the last PEK-HKG flight (and of course the corresponding incoming flight from HKG) regularly in the past few months. Don't know the flight number but I know it's operated by a 320-100.

isn't it quite risky doing it to the last flight of the day ? if they fail to notify the pax on time, then would they pay for overnight ? and this would be really bad too esp if the pax has some commitment already the next morning in the destination city...

On one occasion where I took a perverse interest in the situation I noted that the flight prior to the cancelled one was delayed for an hour. What I don't know is whether that delay was orchestrated to allow pax from the later flight to board but I seriously doubt that. A lot of the pax from the last flight would naturally arrive at the airport on time for the earlier flight and for those who don't, I guess they are protected to fly with someone else like Air China? Afterall, it costs them a lot less to pay Air China to fly those 30/40/50 pax than flying a 320-100 a quarter full (or I should say three quarter empty?) whilst paying over-worked pilots and cabin crew overtime $.

I was interested on that occassion because I was booked on the delayed flight until the day before when I decided I want to head home early afternoon instead... but when I got home, I got a notifly SMS telling me the flight I was originally booked on was delayed by an hour. I never take the last flight which leaves at ~21:00, it gets back into HK way past my bed time!

I am no spotter, BUT, here is the stats from ExpertFlyer...

Over the past two months, flight KA897
Total number of flight recorded 62
Ave delay = 34m
Max delay = 2h 19m
Cancelled = 10
Diverted = 0
Late Arrival
>15mins = 6
>30mins = 11
>45mins = 9