percysmith

http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/a...40902/18852385

Obviously they're dissed. I suppose KA has legal right to do so without comp (no EU261 here), but it'd be scary if you buy KA and get UO without comp more than infrequently.

I would have said they should OLCI to secure their seats. But the video says they couldn't due to instabilities on dragonair.com website (consistent with those on cx.com)

Ultimately comped after taking them to Apple and threatening them with Trade Descriptions Ordinance.
The article reasoned overbooking is a violation of the TDO in that the merchant sold something it cannot deliver; however a more interesting test case may be whether a LCC is a substitute for a "full service carrier"

ChrisLi

I am pretty sure CX / KA lawyer did their job on the service T&C that they are safe. One can claim that even it's a LCC, the service you purchased from the airline is to bring you from A to B, in the class of service mentioned on ticket. And I think KA / UO only fly there once per day so there's no much an alternative.

However, I would rather they provide an alternative to fly to TPE and give them a taxi / train ride to Taichung......

percysmith

Hahaha. I just realised most of the critcism of LCCs here is not attributed to CX directly. So they can still claim LCCs are equal to CX/KA when they want to.

Overbooking can argurably be committing the offence of wrongly accepting payment. However I'm not sure who is the proper authority to investigate (Customs?)

ChrisLi

Wirelessly posted (Xperia Z: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.4.2; D6503 Build/17.1.2.A.0.314) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.135 Mobile Safari/537.36)

Yes, it's Custom department's job

alphaod

Can't read the article here due to the Firewall.

Anyways there are few LCCs I would consider comparable, but would these passengers have preferred to have waited until the next available KA flight?

zhaobao

CX/KA has Customer Service Department ? They only have a social media marketing department whose only job is to apologize to people queueing up for fanfare and responding with their apology script....

The customer is saying that if he bought a ticket on UO on his own it would be cheaper, and from his point of view, he deserves a high compensation, at least to cover the fare difference. This is simple goodwill which of course a not-so-premium airline like CX/KA fails to appreciate. And it baffles how out of the way CX/KA can be to defy common sense, whether they can legally get away with doing something or not.

Not that I have flown on UO, but I would not imagine there would be huge difference in the in-flight experience between KA Y on A320 and an UO flight. In flight entertainment is non-existent on A320 on KA. Catering ? Oh well.....

fakecd

what is the problem? KA/CX was a LCC last time I checked based on quality of service. :P

AC*SE

I think someone has a very difficult row to hoe if they are going to try to demonstrate that airline overbooking constitutes a violation of the TDO.

Any lawyer or administrative tribunal is going to turn to the contract of carriage, where the practice and consequence of overbooking are set out. You don't buy a seat when you buy an airline ticket, you enter into a contract; and your entitlement is to the service as it is described in that contract.

There is no legal argument here--only a PR argument.

percysmith

I don't think any contract (such as CoC) can override statute. Otherwise you'd have companies contracting themselves out of consumer protection laws - HK courts ignore those terms.

DellRocks

I much rather fly directly via UO, then to fly to TPE, and taxi/train. The latter option is just asking for trouble. I could just imagine passengers whining "we were promised a taxi ride to Taichung, but when we reached TPE, it took us ___ hours to flag down a CX agent and they knew nothing about it....and it took another ____ hours to sort it out...blah blah blah.

percysmith

I also checked other jurisdictions

South Africa seems to have similar provisions, they more directly call it over-selling and over-booking http://www.labourguide.co.za/consume...o-protect-them . Their legislation (Consumer Protection Act) prescribes either a. special penalty interest rates for the payment collected until refunded or b. comparable flight and incidentals http://www.news24.com/Travel/Flights...oking-20120907

Australia's Consumer Law actually has the "wrongly accepting payment" clauses. However ACL does not prescribe the penalty. A guide https://events.com.au/overbooking-ai...senger-rights/ suggests the ACCC (the Australian consumer watchdog which has the statutory authority to enforce the ACL) has not taken action against Australian airlines because the overbooking rates are not high enough to be a concern (lower than US) and airlines have own policies to deal with IDB passengers, but the ACCC has the right to mandate compensation.

In HK the penalty is $500,000 and imprisonment of its directors and managers http://www.tannerdewitt.com/what-you...ons-ordinance/ .

Cathay Boy

If we allowed this, that means everytime you buy any tickets with CX/KA you are not safe. CX/KA will just say "sorry, overbooked, here's a ticket for <some lame LCC>, you get there too, bye bye". Many nations have laws the regulates overbooking, even if it is common practice. This is why in the USA they try very hard to get people to take another flight earlier or later of the day with compensation of cash, upgrades, etc. I am surprise HK don't have such basic legal protection for fliers.

AC*SE

Of course not--but there is no statutory prohibition against overbooking. The Trades Descriptions Ordinance bans practices such as passing off, misleading advertising, bait and switch, and the like.

Since airlines are perfectly frank in their description of overbooking practices, and the potential consequences of it, there is nothing inherent in the practices that runs contrary to the TDO.

percysmith

http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_i...9?OpenDocument


If business (traders) can get around the above section by simply being "perfectly frank" about it, isn't that just another disclaimer?

peasant

But overbooking is statistically shown to mean that there are reasonable grounds for the trader to expect to supply the product.

E.g airline has 100 seats to sell. It sells 103 of them, historically 5 don't turn up. However, for this flight, only 2 don't show up. But of 101 passengers who needed a seat, 100 got a seat. That's reasonable.

But the other 6 flights that week, only 98 show up as expected. Their "non supply rate" is now 1 in 700 or so. Even more reasonable