Premium Economy - beware of equipment changes
 

My travel agent notified me today one of the flight in our October paid PE tickets had been changed and downgraded to economy. My agent and I had spent half of the morning to rebook onto another flight on a different date for PE seats.
Firstly, CX should be more proactive to rebook us into PE seats on an alternative flight.
Secondly, if we take the economy with PE ticket, we would only receive asiamiles at economy rate instead of 110%. That is quite unfair.

October is a long way off and CX is known to change/substitute aircraft frequently so keep an eye on original flight # as it could change back. Good luck.

I think you can ask for the refund for tix difference but if you paid PE, they should honour PE's miles.

Yes it's unfair. But no you can't get refund.

I have no idea why someone would pay a much higher fare for something can't be even guaranteed! I mean, Qantas offers PE seats too and the price is not much different from CX... and QF could actually guarantee you a PE seat in all their flights to the destination and you will get 110% of mileage to your MPC guaranteed too.

By having only a few of their aircraft carrying PE seats which are subject to the last-minute equipment change, releasing these fares to the Australian market is just not fair to the customers. To me, at least they should guarantee that if there is an equipment change without advanced notice, the pax who bought PE will be transferred to other carriers who offer these seats.

Before CX increases the number of their equipments to offer PE seats so that I am more confident on what I will end up with after paying the money, I will not go anywhere near to their PE fares. Personal preference though.

Please accept my sympathies 'cos I don't think this is what OP deserves!

I will incline to say that October is too far out and no need for panic.

Given CX's laid-back attitude towards regional aircraft swaps regarding F class, I wonder if they'll do that with PEY on long-haul aircraft too. I have to imagine that will impact PEY yields and piss off pax.

Unlike before, when CX's long-haul fleet was fairly uniform, they now have a lot of longhaul aircraft configs under a same aircraft type. The 747 will now have two configs (1 previously), while their 777-300ER has 4 separate configs (back in the day it was just 1, 77A). Of those 6 747/777 longhaul configs, 3 will have PEY and 3 won't. When 77A is phased out, they'll still have 2 aircraft types (77D/74A) without PEY, and I have to imagine they will be subbed in when tech issues arise on 77G, 77H and 74K.

I do find it interesting that this T&C is only on the Australian website, and only on the offers where the flight doesn't terminate in HK (ie Rest of Asia, London etc).

I have (blind?) faith that if there was an aircraft swap out that they will do the right thing by me....but who knows??

Thanks for sharing this. You are right. I have checked UK/US CX websites and couldn't find such terms and conditions. It looks like only applies to Australia.

Slightly off topic:

Given the low number of PE equipped flights/aircraft in the fleet, I think being ticketed in PE gives people a severe disadvantage when it comes to flexibility. For an example: there's barely one flight a day between HKG to LHR and when I attempted to change my flight to a later flight in the evening, even when I said I was willing to downgrade to economy, they told me the system would not allow them to do such a booking. I feel like they should allow PE tickets to be booked as Economy tickets if we need, if they can downgrade for an equipment change without compensation.

I feel like I would be much better served paying for a higher ticket Y class ticket for the flexibility.

This just happened to me as well. Purchased my Premium Economy ticket on cathaypacific.com, was issued a e-ticket that said Premium Economy and was able to select my seat under Manage My Booking in Premium Economy.

A few days later, there was an equipment change and I was bumped back to Economy. After several calls over a week to the Mumbai call center, I was just told that it would be impossible to get a seat in Premium Economy for my itinerary again. Was told I would be refunded the fare difference. When I inquired as to other compensation, I was told they do not offer any other compensation for this situation. (I'm in the US if it makes a difference).

So it seems like they are free to pull the old bait-and-switch with this product.

What fare class did they bump you down to?

B and H, so at least I can still get miles. I'd be more upset if that was not the case. But I doubt my fare refund will be significant.

UPDATE: A couple hours later a different agent (who I had been working with before) called me back, and offered me a free exit row seat to make up for the inconvenience. Not optimal, but at least it is something. Obviously they could not offer this to all PE pax if an entire cabin was effected.

You should argue with them on this one - there was probably a V class available at the time, and if you are a CX GO, you would be able to guarantee this anyway, so they should give you the fare difference to V class.

How far out is your flight? I suspect that it might be better if you notice an equipment change for a flight that's quite far away to not contact CX. By contacting CX, you are tacitly accepting a class change, and makes it easier for CX to say that you knew about the class change in advance and hence you get less compensation. Also, the plane might change back to one with Y+.

I guess H/B has the same 12 month validity and upgrade with miles options? That's the reason?

I was supposed to fly Y+ in August. I am on the same boat and mine is booked on M class outbound SFO-CAN and R class return CAN-SFO, and now its booked B class. I called CX and they said they will call back and let me know what CX will compensate. If it will be fare diff, how are they calculated? My outbound is M class, so I could have booked L class (lowest) on return. If CX is going to refund B class fare diff, and its not fair. In fact, B fare is higher than R fare.