<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Guy Betsy:
You said that AA had issued the ticket with AA flight numbers whilst the flight was operated by CX. But your routing was JFk-YVR-HKG. Does you ticket actually say JFK-YVR-HKG or just JFK-HKG. Because:
1) AA does not have authority to operate under AA flight number for JFK-YVR. If it's that AA would have booked it as CX. If your ticket was routed that way, you COULD have gotten out of YVR and was fully entitled to sit in First.
2) Yes, unfortunately if CX is to calculate your fare difference, it will stipulate the rules of the Oneworld RTW fare which is that there is no refund due if you are to travel in a lower class.
Yes it is not your fault. But unfortunately you chose to fly that day in Business Class because someone somewhere cancelled your reservation. If it is a CX operated and numbered flight, and AA reissued the ticket and did not queue the ticket number to CX, CX will cancel the booking. If the AA agent failed to note that, well, that is most likely what happened! If you had decided to accept travel the next day, then all would have been fine.
But I agree with number_6. It is not really the fault of CX that you got downgraded, but rather communications between AA and CX. I wouldn't drag your travel agent into this as he / she has nothing to do with it. However, it would have solved part of your problem had you asked AA to reissue you with OPEN dated tickets entirely and you asked your trvl agent in HK to book all your flights for you.
Basically you could ask your travel agent to forward your letter to the relevant departments. Or you may call CX res in HKG and ask them to give you the proper address to send a couriered letter to instead of just the PO Box.
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Thanks for the info. Yes, it seems that AA did not queue the ticket number to CX, since the ticketing agent in JFK mentioned in passing that the "reservation was cancelled because there was no ticket number available". I didn't know what she meant, but now I do.
My ticket was just JFK-HKG, no intermediate segment, I keep mentioning YVR because that is where I could have taken the F seat. Maybe I should have.
I could have flown a different day, but I was already in JFK, and had no real reason to stay there. If I had found this out while still in BOS, I might have been able to catch this earlier, and either fly a different day/different routing, or avoid the problem entirely.
What riles me is that I don't think that this is CX's fault, although they could have put me in F from JFK-YVR and then passed me on to J YVR-HKG (ex-post, I would have flown in F all the way because of the passenger cancelling YVR-HKG). This was never discussed as a possibility, and at least I would have gotten my F dinner and the PJs (yea I know it sounds petty but there are very few flying experiences left worth looking forward to, and this one was of them. Another one is about to come to an end in a few weeks when speedbird is retired.)
In the end, I am the one that pays for it for assuming that something as simple as this wouldn't be botched by oneworld/AA/CX.
[This message has been edited by Pickles (edited 09-28-2003).]