Outbound flight skipped, return still valid?
 

Hey, in January I booked a flight FRA-HKG-DPS // DPS-HKG-FRA op by CX with an OTA for my brother and me. Outbound flight was two days ago, return flight will be Mid of March. I skipped the first half of the ticket (FRA-HKG-DPS), but my brother took the flight. Now as far as I know many airlines will cancel your return flight then (cancel the other legs etc.). When I check the booking at CX's website now everything seems fine for my return flight. Does anyone know for sure that I won't be able to take my return flight? Does it matter that my brother took the outbound flight?
Best, Panix

Hey, you must be very excited about taking your first flight ever, I remember when it was my time, and I could not stop looking out of the window when I was finally aboard.

I am really sorry having to break the bad news for you though: If you miss your outbound flight and do not even change and then fly the outbound flight after the initial departure date, your return leg will get voided. There is no chance that CX will let you board the return flight without you having taken the outbound first, no matter what your brother has done or not. The CX website does not always reflect all the status quo of all bookings in real time, so I would not rely on it to make decisions.

So you will probably have two options now:

1) Call the OTA and ask if they can help rebook the FRA-HKG-DPS sectors to a later date, take that flight, and then you will have no problems getting on the return flights. Your OTA will most likely charge you a no-show fee in addition to a change fee, all provided that your ticket contains a no-show option that allows you to rebook after the original departure date.

2) Buy a new ticket DPS-FRA and forget about your old CX ticket.

Hope this helps!

Where did OP say this was their first flight ever? They said they skipped the first half of their ticket which was two days ago.

OP your return flight is already voided having skipped the outbound. You'll have to look into the no-show policy like NetJets mentioned. Your brother's flight has nothing to do with yours as they are completely separate tickets even if they're on a single PNR.

Hey guys, thanks for the infos!
It's not my first flight, I'm OW Emerald. But, I'm always excited when I fly. :)

Hmm, I feared that it will be like that. This rule really sux. It's like eating only half a meal in the restaurant and then being charger more cause you didn't eat up.

Btw: Is it easy to get back the taxes? :D

It’s nothing like a restaurant meal at all. This is a transportation service. It is widely known that for almost all fares in all markets the ticketed flights must be taken in sequence, otherwise the remainder auto cancel. While it may look fine online, your ticket is no longer valid unless CX explicitly reinstates it.

Not to be rude but how does someone get to be OW Emerald without familiarity with this rule which applies to essentially all airline tickets.

This is basically key. You paid for a set of flights, in a certain order, on certain dates, and nothing except that. As someone who lives in SFO it's not like I don't dislike this myself given how many itineraries are LAX-SFO-XXX for half the price of just SFO-XXX, but that's just how the market is.

Here's the wording in the conditions of carriage.

Hilarious!

I would call CX immediately to see if your outbound flights can be reinstated/saved - you could refer to fears/uncertainty about HK and HKG transits due to Coronavirus causing you to no-show for the outbound flights. Give it a try!

If it was fear that caused OP to no show for flight coming in to HK, how did he get here?

Whilst CX may agree to do this, I don't see any clear logic here. If the reason for the skipped outbound was Corona virus related, then (1) why would OP travel to DPS via alternative means, and more importantly, (2) why would OP want to return via the original route but reversed?

As I understand it the OP is not in HK; maybe at DPS now by alternative traveling or still at origin.

If the return flights is not in the near furture maybe the OP could be less concerned about the HKG transit?

I believe CX website is up-to-date and the reservation may still be there. The issue is that the ticket is no longer valid if used out of sequence, so even if the reservation never gets cancelled, OP will have problem when he tries to check-in at DPS.

In general, CX allows you to get the taxes back even if the fare itself is not refundable, but no one can answer this without knowing the fare basis, original date of purchase, and original date of departure. Maybe you don't even have to pay the no show fee to change the outbound, or maybe the entire ticket can no longer be used. It all depends on the fare rule.

One good thing is that CX is currently waiving all the change fee (penalty part) for all travels via HKG from 01FEB to 29FEB. In fact, they didn't even mention "no show fee cannot be waived" for 04FEB-29FEB.

OP - Pick up the phone and call CX. Maybe you got lucky and your ticket was not cancelled. Maybe you get lucky and your ticket can be reinstated. With the chaos at CX, anything is possible. But, you will not know until you call.