Hi,

I have lurked here for a while but this is my fist post.

I am a Marco Polo Silver member and had a booking from LHR to HKG on Thursday 15th April, now because of the volcano my flight got bumped until the next day. Then the problems continued and my flight got bumped to Monday 19th, this was again cancelled. Obviously the problems have continued so i called Cathay yesterday to find out what was going on and they said the first flight they can put me on is May 7th!

A friend of mine is also flying Cathay and called the day before me, and got told the same date, on top of this, another friend called them today and asked about a flight from anywhere in Europe and was told May 7th.

My question for anyone who has any idea about this sort of thing, would all the flights really be fully booked until May 7th or are they just being cautious? When i log into cx.com i see that i haven't been assigned a seat for the May 7th flight so does this mean there may be a chance i would get an earlier flight? Do i need to call them to let them know that i would be willing to be in 'standby'. It just seems odd they are telling everyone May 7th and not assigning seats.

It's getting a bit desperate for me now, i was actually emigrating to the Philippines to start a new job. I rented my room out, i have no belongings and am staying in a hotel with just my suitcase, not sure how long i can hold out :/

Worst thing was, i used my miles to upgrade to business class. I was really looking forward to it, obviously now its back to cattle and i am unsure what happens with my miles

Thanks for any info.

Edit: I also have a completely unrelated question. I recently flew from HKG to LHR on a pretty much empty plane. However, i found that when i sat down in a 3 row seat, i had an elderly couple next to me. I was literally the only person on the plane with 2 people sat next to me. I asked if they checked in online and they said no. Now i know this may sound a little high and mighty, but as a silver member who has flown 60k miles in a year, why the hell would i get someone allocated next to me? I spoke to other people whilst stretching my legs on the plane and making small talk who said it was their first time flying Cathay, why weren't they put next to them?