A friend of mine recently flew from DPS to HKG in J and was disgusted. As she reclined in her seat she found this:

http://i.imgur.com/p9EYD.jpg

Yes, that is a full set of toenails near her "sterilized" headphones... The CSD came up and said that they needed to keep the seat as is to prove to HKG that it wasn't cleaned properly. They offered her another seat in J and a warm towel to clean up. Otherwise, nothing else was/has been done on CX's side.

My question is: Who should she contact about this/ what would be appropriate compensation? Thanks again for your inputs.

Contact the MPC, surprisingly I have found that emailing them rather than calling is more effective as the message can be passed on to different channels and you can get a response from a more authoritative staff member.

I sent an email to MPC about the broken business class seat, I got a reply about 10 days after apologizing and giving me 7000 Asiamiles as compensation. But the thing is I wasn't able to move since it was a pretty full flight. While your friend was given a new seat but then again I'm sure it would be worth a short to email them.

Seems like you were offered a new seat, wouldn't that suffice?

FYI this was an award ticket. Sorry, I forgot to mention but she used AA miles for the redemption.

Did she sit in another seat during the flight? I don't see why she should be offered compensation if she could move and got a perfectly fine seat for her flight. Seems kinda like taking advantage of CX to me...

Now if she was forced to stay there, then that's another issue altogether. She should be entitled to something. Not sure how the logistics of that work out given it was an AA redemption (maybe get the amount of miles back for that segment), but regardless that's gross to have no choice but to sit in that seat for the duration of a flight.

Make sense?

I don't care what they give her in compensation, that's just gross. That said, I don't think that there's a lot of compensation due here. Good thinking by the CSD, though, to preserve the evidence.

Thinking this is worthy of compensation is utterly laughable. She got an apology and a "new" seat (i.e. one that thousands of previous passengers have farted into, wiped their sweaty bodies over and generally abused).

Don't settle for anything less than lifetime Diamond tier MPC membership. If they don't agree, advise your friend to switch to Garuda instead next time.

Seems many people tend to agree that no compensation is due. Fair enough.

Then again, if this were my business, I'd be rather embarassed by such an occurrence and would be willing to offer some sort of goodwill gesture to make up for it. But that's just me.

I didn't open up the picture link at the office because I was expecting something truly gross.

I am at home now and can only say that after taking a look at the cleaning error I agree that the idea of asking for compensation is laughable.

The OP's friend got a new seat which is all that is warranted.

In my numerous flights with CX I have found things that are much worst: other people's left over tissues, worn airplane socks, what looks like liquid stain on seats (I don't even want to guess what is the liquid made of). I either simply ask the FAs to dispose of them, or in the liquid case, asked for a new seat. Life go on. Never cross my mind to ask for compensation....

Ha ha, reply of the day!

Another heated topic...

If I were you, I will push hard on this for compensation. It does not matter if it is a award ticket or not.

The reason is simple - damage has been done.

For those of you who said compensation is laughable, can you kindly provide your response in the following questions (which also explain my rationale for compensation):

1. Could the passenger forget what had happened after changing the seat?

2. Does CX has a responsibility to maintain aircraft hygiene?

3. Could the passenger do anything different from getting into this?

Also - feedback is what keeping the airlines you like to improve. If you don't let your airlines to know your disappointment, they will not improve at all.

There's a difference in wanting the airline to improve vs. corporate shakedown. CX is already a very good corporation in handing out goodwill in my opinion. To take advantage of this will only make CX turning more into NA airlines rather than improving them.

Letting them know of the situation is already helping them improve. The crew will make a note into their work log and actions will be taken to address the issue internally. Also, we need to separate honest mistakes from harmful mistakes. The sense of entitlement that one can get compensated and take advantage from any and all situations is a laughable one. And like I said far from making CX better it will only make CX more hostile towards future claims as they are tired of being nice as it caused them to be shakedown by more passengers in the future.