Originally Posted by
number_6
Not if you are flying Oneworld
I have had great success with airside changes with CX, QF and BA at HKG, painless and reliable. Someone earlier suggested that RJ was also good at this, so maybe it is a Oneworld feature. My own experience has been the opposite of yours at HKG, with CX being able to do the impossible (once they let me fly without a ticket, I purchased it while mid-air; but I flew a lot of CX F back then which probably made a difference).
The lesson I take from your experience is that Star/Skyteam are less well organized than Oneworld, at least at HKG. Also in general connecting via most cities in China is frought with peril at best of times, delays seem to be the norm rather than the exception.
+1
A lot of us forget that while we love the lounges for their comfort, F&B e.t.c. they are also extremely useful in solving any flight related problems. If you fly CX/KA out of HKG, the lounge staff can do almost anything, if you fly another OW airline -you can ask the CX staff to call your airline's desk and while they don't strictly speaking have to do that, they have been very helpful to me most of the time.
On the subject of flying without a ticket, yeah it's called "NON-REC" and airlines use it for situations like yours. This gives airlines a technical capability to check in and accept you for the flight when there is no underlying ticket in the system. Of course whoever checks you in in this way will have to have a good reason for this and will be accountable later.