Bereavement Fares?
 

I need to get a ticket for my father to YYZ from HKG for imminent death in the family. Does CX have such fares and if so, is it possible to book a flight in J because of his age?

Sorry to hear about your lost.

Unfortunately, bereavement fares has been slowly disappearing in the past decade or so. Even with most US domestic airlines, they only offer around a 10% off now a days.

Since this is a time-urgent question, I would highly suggest you pick up the phone and call CX immediately and see what they could offer.

sorry to hear this.
1) don't think such fares exist but anyhow the regular fares on website might be cheaper.
2) depending on circumstances of death, some insurance scheme offers travel cost for immediate family member. You might want to look into this to reduce your immediate financial burden at this difficult time.

Did a quick dummy booking...if your father leave HKG today (27th), or Wed, or Friday this week, you can still get V + V for both inbound and outbound. Total fare HKD 12,892.00. This seems to be same price EX-HKG as some random October / off season dates.

Try booking on another carrier instead of CX. Chances are it will be cheaper. Try KE, BR and even PR as they all fly to YYZ. AC won't be cheap either... if you're looking for a business class ticket.

Sorry for your loss.

My suggestion is simply buy whatever you can buy.

Bereavement Fares, offered or not, usually contains lots of restrictions. In some cases, buying a typical ticket may be cheaper.

Beside - when you think about bereavement fare, always remember this - airlines are business. They don't do favors without reasons.

And unfortunately loss of imminent family member is not a reason.

When my maternal grandma died about 10 years ago, Mum couldn't pull any bereavement fare. But she said our TA used her GO seat guarantee for the only time she's ever used it to date.

CX will waive change charges for death in family (but need to see Death Cert which takes a month to get, hence another OD article):

貴客喪父不獲體恤　國泰僵化硬收手續費招怨

http://hk.on.cc/hk/bkn/cnt/news/2015...00822_001.html

sounds good to hear! so they do help out family members!

Sorry, I do not read Chinese.
My mother is quite sick in Europe. Would you suggest buying a "cheap" ticket at a late date and then change it if my mother passes away at an earlier date (which is likely). Would CX waive the change fee but still reprice the ticket based on fare buckets available?

Brunos - I'm sorry to hear.

If seats are tight, I'd buy the flex fare (preferably with free rebooking and a reasonably-priced cancel) for the earlier date and redate it as I go along. So I'm ready to scram if the end is near. I'd sleep easier at night.

In the Oriental Daily case the passenger's father passed away and the passenger had to rebook his return to YVR.

If you buy cheap and have to leave earlier you'll face the same struggle as the Oriental Daily passenger trying to get a waiver on the cancellation fee and still you'll be subject to full repricing.

I had bought a ticket to see my father, but he passed away before I could get back. So, I needed to change the departure date to an earlier time and had an unspecified return date (given I didn't know how long it would take to sort out his affairs). Luckily, I had a flex ticket with no change fee, but I got hit with a repricing fee. At the time, I didn't care and just paid whatever to get on the next flight back, but it was during the summer and it was a significant percentage of the total fare. I remember being told that if I ended up coming back on a cheaper date/fare, they wouldn't re-price me down.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11A501 Safari/9537.53)

So, normal rules apply, except they let you on in short request by paying those fare buckets...

OD's article says a "long time loyal member" of CX (read: GR) tried to rebook his return leg ticket to stay longer in HK in order to get the stuff of his passed away dad (passed away in the middle of "this month" as per the "news" dated 31 August) done...

However CX refuse to waive the 300 dollars (currency not specified) rebooking fee even if the member already presented CX his birth cert to establish the parent-son relationship as well as the "permit to bury" to proof his dad's death. CX insists to have the death cert instead of the permit in order to waive that 300 dollars... The member said it took a month for the HK Gov't to issue the death cert so it's impossible for him to present CX the death cert when he leaves HK in mid October

Back to your case. If I'm you I won't take this risk. Even if CX agrees to waive your rebooking fee, your rebooking is still subject to ticket conditions as well as sub-class availability so you may not be able to change to a later day flight due to expired ticket (e.g. 1 month for your booking day v. 3 months needed for your actual departure day), full flight (no more V class) etc...

What's a 'GO' ticket? :confused: