Strange working morale
 

Hey

Actually I like to Flyer from ZRH TO HKG because of 3-3-3 in economy class and not 3-4-3(Swiss)

my flight KA615 from XIAMEN to HKG was 2 h 47 mins late because of "operational reasons". Instead of landing 9.45 p.m....I arrived at HKG 0:31 a.m.
This was the reason, I missed my flight CX383(scheduled 0:05) from HKG to Zurich.

CX booked me a new flight route. 1. CX257 HKG-LHR 2. BA718 LHR-ZRH.

Instead of a direct flight to ZRH, I had to fly over LHR. Instead of arriving 6.30 a.m. in ZRH, I arrived 7.45 p.m...a delay over 12 hours

Cathay told me that because of the new booking via LHR, CX fulfilled their obligations completely

For me, this is not okay. Next time I will fly SWISS

tbh, your error was going to china. and not take an earlier flight.

how does SWISS make any difference HKG-ZRH on swiss is even earlier.

Well next time if its book in one ticket with a european airline you could claim EC261/2004

Sadly CX is base in HK and not europe and you are inbound to europe, so you are out of luck, hopefully you have travel insurance

Just curious, did they pay for your hotel during your layover in Hong Kong?

They offered me an hotel in Downtown Hongkong. They told me that it takes 40 mins by Taxi(I had to pay it). When I was done at the airport, it was 2.15 a.m. They told that I have to be at 5 a.m. at the CX check-in to get my tickets...so I have calculated it, that I could have about 1 hour to spend at the hotel...so I stayed at the airport.

Unfortunately at 5 a.m. there was no ticket...I had to wait till 7 a.m. Unfortunately all the aisle seats were gone... So I had to sit with 1,94 cm on a middle seat

Honestly, you failed to request for more/better.

If you had taken LX, with the delay from Xiamen you would have missed your LX flight as well, the only difference being that on LX they would have only been able to put you on the next LX flight 24hours later.

So honestly CX is definitely a way better option when flying out of China and dealing with delays / missed flights. Just as LX would be the better option when flying out of Europe and dealing with delay's over there.

I agree, or LX might put you onto SK/OS which departs also in the morning at around 10am, similar time as CX257.

Instead, I would also suggest consider flying long-haul from China and connect in Europe. Both KLM and XiamenAir flies to Amsterdam from Xiamen directly. In case where the flight is delayed (oh! and long-haul flights from China are delayed less frequent than short-haul flights in general), you will be stuck at Amsterdam where there are a lot more flights to Zurich than from Hong Kong.

So what should have CX done in your opinion? They sent you via LHR because it was faster than wait for the next ZRH flight (whether on LX or CX itself). I am 200% sure that if you asked them for this, they would accommodate your request. The hotel would not be an issue either, since they already agreed to offer this for you.

It sucks to have this sort of delay, but it happens to everyone and it sounds like CX did everything they could.

The real cause was the delay from China, and those delays happen every day and are totally beyond the control of any airline. 2.5 hours is by no means as bad as it gets. We are stuck with it until the Chinese military stops commandeering commercial airspace... which isn't going to happen any time soon.

At least CX has a lot of flights heading to Europe so they could get you on something, even if it was indirect.

I'm surprised they didn't offer you a night at one of the airport hotels though.

I believe there are some criteria as to where CX would accommodate the distrupted pax, but basically, it is just too expensive to accommodate all the Y pax in Regal, Marriot or Novotel @HKIA.

But then I would also expect them paying for your taxi fee if it's in city centre.. plus your journey does not start in Hong Kong

Fully agree here.

I don't understand your anger here. Your flight from Xiamen was delayed - this happens frequently to all airlines in China and is outside CX's control. It's annoying but there's nothing anyone can do about it.

They provided you with a hotel (send the taxi receipt to CX and they should reimburse you) and got you on literally the next available flight to Europe on any airline. You arrived in ZRH at 7.45pm the next day. The next direct flight to ZRH would not even leave HKG until midnight the next day.

Short of chartering you a private jet I'm not sure what else CX could have done. You'd have done no better with LX.

Technically there is a somewhat better OW connection, on QR via DOH. There is a flight that leaves HKG around 01:20am, and I think the best connection would get you to ZRH around 1pm.

And it's totally possible one of those two flights were full.

All-in, I'd say CX did a pretty decent job here, except for denying the taxi fare (which was definitely just wrong information passed, for sure you could've gotten that refunded), and saying come back at 5am (this sounds bizarre to me, considering the check-in counters aren't even open then). Maybe there was some miscommunication. The CX flight accomodations via LHR were pretty good actually, considering the situation. Middle seat sucks though.

That's a tight connection ex-mainland China and I can't say I'd ever recommend it.

Regarding flying Swiss, to the folks dismissing it....I think you're kinda over-exaggerating here. Lufthansa owns both Swiss and Austraian. I've had Lufthansa re-route me on Swiss before. I imagine if the Austrian flight was going the next day with seats, the OP would've been re-routed via VIE to ZRH and had a similar if not slightly worse situation than he received with CX via LHR. Anyway, I don't think it's as bad as some are implying...Swiss = LH Group.

CX does itself a disservice by not putting a warning up about the flights from China or requiring longer connections, especially in the late parts of the day when inbound flights are more likely to be delayed due to system delays throughout the day.

I didnt know that the Austrian flight leaves so early in the day, so I was only considering the two midnight departures on LH/LX, midnight departures on SQ via SIN or possibly daytime departures on any star alliance flight departing China. But then OP would have had to switch too many planes, I'm sure he wouldnt have enjoyed that given that he was angry about his connection through LHR.

I once had the situation the other way around, where I was flying LX MXP-ZRH-HKG and my MXP-ZRH was delayed. Upon arriving at the service counters in ZRH they offered me LX 24h later or LH with connection in MUC/FRA but also with a 24h delay.
I kindly asked them to book me on SQ ZRH-SIN-HKG which left before noon, thus I arrived a good few hours before I would have. It also gave me the one time opportunity to fly SQ J with an LX J ticket that only cost me 1800 Euros.