Originally Posted by
travellingjake
Just wanted to provide an update on my own experience with QR.
Had Avios reward issued on QR paper (157 ticket) from BKK to MAN via DOH for 14MAR, 2 people in J.
QR cancelled the flight on the 12MAR. I didn’t get an email and only spotted the cancellation because I was religiously checking the app for updates. I managed to get through on live chat around 1pm ICT. It was the first time live chat had worked for me. The difference being there was a live chat link in my cancelled booking. Not sure if that made a difference or just coincidence.
Before speaking to QR, I’d researched alternatives with other airlines that I was happy with and had 4 options from Google flights and Skyscanner. As soon as I was connected to an agent, I said “my flight is cancelled, and I’d like to run through options for reprotecting on other airlines” then gave my first option. That wasn’t available, so we checked the second option which was BKK-TPE-LHR on CI (China Airlines). This was available and just as I was about to confirm, I lost connection on live chat.
It took about 30 minutes to get reconnected, but luckily, 2 seats were still available on CI, and we had confirmed e-tickets within about 20 minutes. The whole process took about 2 hours.
Neither agent I chatted with pushed a refund or new date and obliged in checking and booking what worked for me.
The trip back was long. We departed BKK at 0235, brief stop in TPE, almost 16 hours onboard the flight to LHR then 5 hours getting back to Yorkshire. CI are a decent airline. The seat was comfortable, food plentiful and (mostly) tasty. I’ll do a full review which I’ll share on my blog in coming weeks for those interested.
Whilst at BKK, I saw on the departure board that QR were operating a repat flight direct to MAN. I’ve since read that J and F was almost empty on the A380. I don’t know why we weren’t offered the repat flight, other than they might not have had it confirmed when my flight was cancelled or they were trying to prioritise passengers that had been stranded. I’m gutted to have missed out on the A380 as it’s my favourite aircraft, but I’m not complaining. QR did exactly what I asked of them, when I asked it. Considering the experience many other people had, I count myself as one of the lucky ones.
Glad to hear things worked out fine for you. Some people mentioned having difficulties rerouting on reward tickets, that there had to be reward ticket availability on the rebooked flight. Could it be that because your flight was cancelled within 2 days prior to departure, hence you have the flexibility to reroute on any seat available on any airline?