It's probably easy to comment with the benefit of hindsight, but I believe that faced with potentially the biggest storm since 1984 (depends which news reports you were reading) CX really wanted to be prepared. If they had waited until 6pm Sunday to cancel flights, then you would have thousands of people at the airport that they would have had to deal with, and the criticism would have been "They could see it was the largest storm in a decade and they waited until the last minute to cancel the flights???"

Instead, by preparing to cancel operations, they could reduce the number of pax they had to deal with, and know where their planes were so they could plan better the restart of operations. At least passengers knew that they were not going to leave and make some preparations accordingly rather than have to scramble at the last minute turning HKIA into more of a refugee camp than it was on Sunday night.

whilst storm turned out to be a hoax in hindsight, what CX did (pre-announcing that sunday 6pm operation would stop) was good in preventing the mess of last year.

however this is what they could have done better - on Thursday they already knew storm was coming, they should have just waived rebooking as of Thursday, instead of waiting till Saturday to waive such fee (correct me if timing is wrong). That way those without essential travel could have adjusted the travel plan well-in-advance of weekend chaos at call centers.

Also CX needs to up its ITEC - had the rebooking facility worked fine on cx.com, they would have saved a lot of time by allowing travellers/agent to rebook/reroute on their own as they wished, instead of this stupid 1990s style "fill in the form and get back to you" on the website.... Again i'm not the boss but if I was the boss I would have sacked the IT department head just to prove a point for their repeated failures.

Actually, I believe there was a typhoon that people thought was over but it turned back and really hammered HK. Typhoon Ellen back in 1983.

You obviously weren't listening/reading. Gales had ended because there wasn't any heavy rain, and there was just one more intense rain band that was going to sweep across the territory around 8 am. They couldn't send everybody to start their commute until that passed.

No. Ellen just went straight through (smooth WNW movement) passing SW of Lantau.

Just curious, being HKG...obviously the biggest carrier would be CX.

But anyone know how other airlines did in comparison? HX? CI? MU? etcccc....?

I was checked in for my flight out of Melbourne tonight (CX178 - BN25), but can't print out the boarding pass now as online check in is no longer available.

I'm CXGO, so hoping this is because the flight is now full due 2 of the 3 last flights being cancelled - but anyone else experiencing this? Assume I just have to go up to the desk when I get to the airport to get one printed...

CX system?
 

I have been trying the whole morning to do online check-in for a flight out on Wednesday, and keep getting this message from CX's system. "Due to internal system error, you are unable to proceed further. Please close the current browser and try again." Is their system down? Anyone experiencing the same?

BBC news is reporting at least 25 dead so far from Usagi. None in HK, which would seem to argue for the conservative approach being the correct one

yeah those dead are probably from remote coastal villages in phillipines or some unknown chinese fishing town where noone in western world has heard of.

in civilized HK it was business as usual.

I think they shut down OLCI now best goto airport or AEX if in hkg

Ex-Chief of Observatory, Mr. Lam, well-known and respected in HK said even yesterday afternoon that the might of Usagi must not be under-estimated ...

前天文台台長林超英（黑英）雖然不在其位，但佢仍然非常關心風暴情況，尋日仲喺社交網站教大家如何追蹤天兔 。佢尋日下晝話，如果大家想了解天兔嘅路線圖，可以上內地中央氣象台網頁瀏覽汕頭雷達圖，又話最新影像顯示 天兔風眼完整，叫市民唔好低估天兔對香港嘅威脅...

http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/...00176_094.html

I can't say enough good things about the CX checkin staff in MNL. When I got there it still appeared as if no planes were flying from HKG. So the staff scrambled all over trying to find me another connection on other airlines. At the last minute before CX900 was going to leave they heard that HKG was back to normal. They really scrambled to get me booked back into my original connection to DXB, got me through immigration and security and to the gate. While I was waiting they brought out a chair for me to sit in and kept me regularly informed about the different airlines they were checking with. A lot of this good treatment was because of being in J class and Oneworld Emerald. But I was also able to observe their handling of all the other passengers. Of course many people were upset about being delayed, rerouted, or missing connections. But the staff handled them all professionally and with composure. I was impressed.

Good idea to write to CX if you have a moment.
Great to hear!

In the end my experience was not what I expected from my first Typhoon experience. The smoothest flight from PEK to HKG landing at 1pm arriving early and my flight from HKG to SIN left on time too. When arriving in SIN at 7pm I saw a CX flight pushing back so wonder where it went as HKG was supposed to be closed by then?

Only thing that I found strange was the notifly message I received for my PEK -HKG flight saying that passengers with connections (as I had) should not come to the airport. It did cause a little stress trying and failing to contact CX. And no I am not claiming because of this :)

Globalist

Have friends on this flight as well, looks like its departing as scheduled. CX pulled a miracle plane out of its hat