Hi,
CX has issued new customer friendly rebooking rules due to the volcanic ashes incident. At
http://www.cathaypacific.com (direct deep link not possible) it says
"As a result of the Iceland volcano outbreak situation, with immediate effect, rebooking, rerouting, cancellation and refund charges will be waived for all tickets issued worldwide (irrespective of fare type) on/before 15 April 2010 for travel involving London, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, Rome or Frankfurt till 30 April 2010."
And, amongst other things, it says:
"The newly rebooked sector must observe and conform to the conditions of the respective fare rule, e.g. black out dates, flight application, weekend / weekday travel, stopover charges, and applicable seasonalities by collecting additional / refunding difference (if any) as appropriate."
Now I have a ticket in O class for Friday April 23 PER-HKG-FRA (issued in 2009). The ticket rules would include a free stop over in HKG. I would like to move the second leg (HKG-FRA, CX 289) by 24 hours to April 24. So I called the FRA office of CX (Australian office was closed) to make that change.
I was told that the information on the website was incorrect and only flights that have been cancelled can be rebooked for free.
I really don't believe that because there would be no point for CX to announce these new rules on their website if only cancelled flights would be affected, since they have to rebook these passengers anyway!
What's more, I think that CX (or rather one of their passengers) would be happy if I was travelling a day later and thus a seat was made available a day earlier, since due to the vulcanic ashes incident these flights will be very full for quite a while.
Anyway, I was told I would have to pay 14 Euro for extra taxes in HKG (I'd happily pay that) plus 300 Euro for the ticket change (which I don't want to pay because of the mentioned new rules). Then again she said that in my booking class there weren't any seats available anyway so I couldn't rebook even if I paid the 300 Euro.
However, the booking engine tells me that some discounted economy class seats ARE actually available for the flight I want to take (I don't know which booking classes).
Maybe someone of you can help me. Who can I talk to at CX that actually knows about the new rules they have published on their website and can rebook my flight?
I understand these new rules as saying that ALL tickets to FRA until April 30 can be rebooked WITHOUT a fee depending on availability. And it doesn't say availabilty in the very booking class (O won't be available for a long time); since there are economy seats available on CX289 on April 24 I would really like to take advantage of these new rules and move my flight by 24 hours. I would of course pay the extra tax charged by HKG, but definitely not the 300 Euro asked by CX's FRA office. My ticket has not "blackout dates" or "seasonality" restrictions and a stopover in HKG would be free (which was actually confirmed by the FRA office).
TNX for any input!