JAL Mileage Bank - Good experience on JAL after mixup

I'm a regular over on the CX forum, but had a great experience w/ JAL yesterday. Was booked on JAL KOA - NRT, and then on a separate PNR with CX NRT-HKG. The outbound flight NRT-KOA had a medical emergency far into the flight and turned back to NRT, hence the KOA-NRT segment didn't go as scheduled. Despite KOA being an outpost they arranged transportation, hotel bookings for everyone and an $80 food credit within a few hours. It wasn't exactly the Four Seasons, but given the circumstances I thought it was well-handled. They flight ended up being 12 hours delayed, but as I was already going to miss my HKG connection and wouldn't save much time so I decided to fly the next day, 24 hours later. JAL had no problem with that.

In fact, even though the NRT-KOA segment was an award ticket booked through CX (hence CX's ticket), despite me being DM on CX (oneworld Emerald) and calling them 5-6 times it was JAL who eventually solved the problem and rebooked me the following day after the CX agents were completely hopeless to figure out a solution (typical).

I'm a regular over on the CX forum, but had a great experience w/ JAL yesterday. Was booked on JAL KOA - NRT, and then on a separate PNR with CX NRT-HKG. The outbound flight NRT-KOA had a medical emergency far into the flight and turned back to NRT, hence the KOA-NRT segment didn't go as scheduled. Despite KOA being an outpost they arranged transportation, hotel bookings for everyone and an $80 food credit within a few hours. It wasn't exactly the Four Seasons, but given the circumstances I thought it was well-handled. They flight ended up being 12 hours delayed, but as I was already going to miss my HKG connection and wouldn't save much time so I decided to fly the next day, 24 hours later. JAL had no problem with that.

In fact, even though the NRT-KOA segment was an award ticket booked through CX (hence CX's ticket), despite me being DM on CX (oneworld Emerald) and calling them 5-6 times it was JAL who eventually solved the problem and rebooked me the following day after the CX agents were completely hopeless to figure out a solution (typical).

Welcome to JL Forum and thanks for the report :D I was wondering why the flight got delayed yesterday when I saw the announcement on the website. And worried there's another engine problem...

Kind of "surprising" that they handled the emergency that well. Maybe someone recently added a "How to handle medical emergency and delay flights when the passenger booked an award ticket and a connecting flight with a separate PNR who wants to postpone his/her connecting flight 24 hours" user manual :p

Despite KOA being an outpost they arranged transportation, hotel bookings for everyone and an $80 food credit within a few hours.


That is really amazing. I can't imagine any US carrier doing this.


In fact, even though the NRT-KOA segment was an award ticket booked through CX (hence CX's ticket), despite me being DM on CX (oneworld Emerald) and calling them 5-6 times it was JAL who eventually solved the problem and rebooked me the following day after the CX agents were completely hopeless to figure out a solution (typical).

What a contrast in service. I'm surprised CX was so bad at helping a DM in this situation...

Welcome to JL Forum and thanks for the report :D I was wondering why the flight got delayed yesterday when I saw the announcement on the website. And worried there's another engine problem...

Kind of "surprising" that they handled the emergency that well. Maybe someone recently added a "How to handle medical emergency and delay flights when the passenger booked an award ticket and a connecting flight with a separate PNR who wants to postpone his/her connecting flight 24 hours" user manual :p

Sorry, totally forgot about the post for a few weeks. But to answer your question, all I found out was a passenger passed out on the outbound flight and they turned back to NRT.

...but actually JL did two things well to follow-up also.

1.) Taxi credit. I wanted to go the following morning (24 hours late, on the day after's flight) since I didn't like the idea of leaving the hotel at 9pm and flying through the night. I missed my meeting anyway. Obviously, JL wasn't arranging transportation to the airport in the morning since it was 100% my decision not to take my original flight, which ended up departing 14 hours late at night (and which they arranged transportatoin for). It was a $75 cab ride to the airport the morning after, and without even as much as a question they refunded the $75 cash on the spot.

2.) A second rebooking. Our flight the following day was delayed (I'm already 24 hours late, I only have a 1 hour scheduled layover in NRT before the last CX connection to HKG, and at this point thinking "you have to be kidding me"). Since the KOA-Japan flight is KOA-HNL-NRT (with a crew change in HNL), I think the incoming flight crew that boards in HNL had worked too many hours in the past 24 or some regulation, due to the mixup the day before, so we're going to arrive HNL on time but depart HNL 2.5 hours late. And this delay meant I was going to AGAIN miss my CX connection in NRT by an hour, which was the last departure of the night, which meant I in effect was going to be delayed another day and would have to spend the night in Tokyo. Despite it being CX's ticket, CX was so helpless that the JL agent in KOA just got on the phone, started yelling at people in HNL or somewhere else, and eventually I got my ticket changed to an earlier JL flight out of HNL, even though my ticket was non-endorsable, and I technically was flying over KOA-HNL on the original flight code that is ex-KOA-NRT, and I was getting on a different plane in Honolulu that was ex-HNL, not KOA. Not sure how they figured it out (which made plenty of common sense, but airlines usually lack a lot of that), but she did.

An American/Japanese lady who I think had previously worked at LAX. I definitely credit her with making things work out.