kiteTO

My wife and I booked a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Adelaide in business departing in a couple of weeks. I was double checking the reservation when I got the ominous "call us" warning on the website. Of course, CX is no longer flying to Adelaide anymore and our flights have been cancelled (no idea when that happened as we got no prior warning and the reservation was made months ago).

I called in and the agent suggested we could be re-booked on a flight to Melbourne - but no business class seats were available. I asked if they could do better than that - given I'm not even getting taken to my original destination. The agent said she would add me "to a request queue with their international desk" for business class availability on the Melbourne flight.

Anyone experienced this before? Is this a pipe dream to think CX will open up a couple business class seats for us?

WestCoastPDX

I don’t understand what else you would want or expect?

Presuming you’re an adult human - get your refund and book alternative flights.



—
(Edited to add: yes, this happened to me ~2 weeks ago, HKG-LAX in F award flight canceled. I got my refund, and booked alternative flights. It was incredibly easy and not worth hassling Alaska agents about in the least. I wasn’t entitled to anything more, so, I didn’t ask for anything more.)

eponymous_coward

Well, you used airline miles from a program run by an airline that doesn’t operate flights on that continent, presumably to save money. Now you’re finding out why it saved money- you don’t have a cash ticket that can be used to purchase a different routing, just miles and some money for taxes, and Alaska can’t put you in their own flights. How exactly do you expect Alaska to do anything other than politely ask Cathay to fix it?

Worst case I’d take the miles refund going into coach and expect that the plane may be very empty because of COVID-19, so you might get open seats.

kiteTO

I understand it's out of Alaska's control. Sorry I should have specified my question is about the "request queue" and whether there's any chance that will be successful as it's not something I've heard about before.

eponymous_coward

It’s all a big Ż\_(ツ)_/Ż, pandemics that cause mass airline route cancellations aren’t normally how airlines operate, so I don’t think there’s any real idea what to expect, other than presumably Cathay will take care of customers on tickets THEY issued first?

flytoeat

Probably going to the AS MP liaison desk, which is likely very busy right now. They may be able to help you, but I'd try to find an alternative yourself. Good news is award availability is opening up (surprise).

Often1

I would focus about being rebooked first and class of service second. With more and more service being cancelled, it will become about getting you between HKG and Australia and then possibly about admissibility (if not Australian) and quarrantine otherwise.

Flying for Fun

My CX F award flight HKG-LAX was cancelled. I received an SMS message directly from CX advising of the cancellation and that they had moved me to an earlier flight retaining my F seat. I did get a notice days later from AS that my itinerary had changed but no calls to AS were required.

I also had a revenue LAX-HKG-SIN (outbound already flown) itinerary on CX for early February I needed to change. CX was so busy they weren't even allowing you to wait on the phone and a tweet to them took 13 hours for a reply. I ended up no-showing for the flight. Later, they changed my itinerary to a future date without issue and without fees. I plan to fly that in April.

From my experience, CX has been very accommodating and are trying to make the best of a bad situation.

In my case, it was a route reduction, not a route termination. I am in Sydney now and the flights on CX are still arriving from HKG & QF flights are still departing for HKG.

I would suggest contacting CX to see if they can accommodate you on an alternate flight close to your original destination.

James

Eastbay1K

Um, sorry to be the naysayer here, but AS sold the OP a ticket, issued on 027 ticket stock, to get him from XXX to YYY. Now, these are particular circumstances, but generally the responsibility lies on the owner / issuer of the ticket to provide transportation XXX to YYY.

eponymous_coward

The service is cancelled, don’t contracts of carriage usually explicitly cover this?

“I don’t want a refund or coach seats with routing problems because your partner is dealing with a pandemic, please buy me revenue business class tickets for my flights or I’m suing and yelling to the DOT” is definitely one approach to take.

Often1

Generally-speaking it does. But, that could simply be to cancel for a refund or for a reroute which OP finds sub-optimal. There is nothing in the AS COC or the MP T&C which remotely suggests that AS must purchase a revenue ticket if that is what OP wants.

OP is certainly free to take the refund and then purchase whatever else is on offer.

eponymous_coward

And my point is a miles and taxes refund just isn’t as good for buying goods and services (like a replacement ticket when an AS partner cancels the route out from under the OP, and AS goes “sorry, dude, we don’t fly there and we have to beg for award space”) as cash is. You have less options when your spending 30,000 miles instead of dollars.

geminidreams

Look for availability to Perth and Sydney as well. The cost from either to Adelaide by air is minimally different than from Melbourne.
My daughter flew Cathay last week from Perth to London. in economy she had 3 seats to herself for the whole journey so economy may not be such an ordeal.

BenA

I'm surprised you're getting such a negative reaction here. I was on a flight where CX rebooked me from F to J due to an aircraft swap that ended F service on the particular flight I was ticketed on. Alaska contacted Cathay and had their liaison open up a new F seat for me on a different flight that didn't have any award availability, and I had an updated ticket about four days later.

I think this sort of thing is a reasonable expectation when a flight is affected by an airline-initiated cancellation, even if it's a partner airline. Delta does similar for bookings on AF/KL/VS/AM/etc. and I wouldn't expect Alaska to behave any differently with their partners. I did have to politely ask for the escalation - this isn't the sort of thing that's proactively offered, but it is usually possible.

Good luck for a safe trip!

kiteTO

Well, it looks like I was way too pessimistic. Checked my booking on the Cathay website to find we've already been re-booked on the MEL flight in J! In the grand scheme of things a minor inconvenience. Now to pray for no quarantines lol.