Flight cancellation
 

Looking for some advice.

I was booked in business class on Air France from Taipei to London Heathrow on Sunday 12 January. Original itinerary was
AF551 TPE1115-1820CDG
AF1380 CDG2120-2145LHR

They have cancelled our flight and rebooked us (same day, but 10h30 earlier) to:
AF557 TPE0045-0750CDG
AF1580 CDG1000-1030LHR

The new times don't work for us, as we are flying into Taipei on the Saturday evening and I think the connection would now be too tight (we were originally going to stay in an airport hotel overnight).

If I call Air France, I imagine they will offer us the KLM flight which leaves at 0020 on the Monday as an alternative, which is not ideal as we have work in London on Monday morning.

There are other better options - there are flights on the Sunday with Eva Air, Thai Airlines, China Eastern or Cathay Pacific, which have similar timings to the original Air France itinerary. I know airlines can be asked to book on another carrier if that is a more reasonable option, but I can't find a definition anywhere which describes what counts as reasonable/unreasonable.

Any advice on tactics with their contact centre would be much appreciated.

David

Call AF (assuming you booked directly with them), have ready the flight numbers you want them to rebook you on and ask for that, alternatively you may also opt to ask for a refund and book those flights yourself.
I don't know when do you arrive on Saturday evening but bearing in mind it saves you a night at a hotel and gets you home earlier, you may want to check first if the connection would be too tight or doable.

Do you have status on AF/KL? Airlines are most of the time reluctant to rebook onto other airlines, as it'll probably cost them money and I'm betting, this far out, there's no chance they'll rebook you to Eva, Thai or Cathay, MAYBE onto China Eastern, as there are plenty AF/KL or Skyteam options. When I have schedule changes, I look for the best option for me, and as @Ditto described, feed them to AF/KL (I've only did this with alternative AF/KL flights) and they've always honored my alternative itinerary so far, even changing it to a day later/earlier if that was the most convenient option for me.

It's not a cancelation but a schedule change (new winter schedule; B787 instead of B772). But that doesn't really matter. Call AF and feed them with your ideas. You mention that you arrive on Saturday evening: Maybe the connection time is enough to catch the AF flight. TPE isn't such a huge airport. I'd say, a connection on separate tickets in 3hrs is sufficient.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll call them armed with my preferred alternative options.

I have thought about risking the tight connection. We arrive at 2205 on a China Airlines flight (on a different booking, so we won't be able to through check our bags). We will land at Taipei terminal 1, then need to pick up our bags, clear customs/immigration, transfer to terminal 2 and then check in our bags for the new flight. As check in for the Air France flight will close at 2345, we will only have 1h40 to do all of that. I think that's too tight, but would welcome any thoughts on that.

My guess is that - even though a separate ticket - China Airlines (ST too) will let you check you luggage all the way through.

And if you don't have luggage to pick up you can transfer without going thru immigration - even from term 1 tot 2....

Perhaps call them and ask them to link the PNRs so that they might even assist you when the connection would become tight.....

I'm not sure if they'd check the luggage al the way through but please ask and report back. However, there's no such thing as "linking" PNR's. They can leave a note in both PNR's but there's no guarantee that someone will see this when irrops happen.

I had to do this only once, but CI checked my bags on two separate tickets from SIN to AMS via TPE, first flight on CI and second on KL. They were very kind and did this quickly and efficiently, adding a "short connection" tag and a "First Class Baggage" tag, even though they had no First class anymore on their flights. I was travelling in C, I'm not sure if that helped.

It most certainly did; I suspect your Platinum status (for Life, no less!) also helped.

However, we all know that through-checking CAN be done.

The issue is that: you can always ask, but you must expect to be refused.

No-one should ever expect that through-checking will happen, even if you benefitted from it on a previous occasion under the same or similar circumstances!