Funkygal

Hello all,

Excuse my ignorance but I'm wondering if anyone could kindly advise please.

In January this year, I booked the following journey:

Departure date: Mon 06 Nov 2023
Time: 17:50 ->13:55 +1 Tue 07 Nov 2023 (12h 5m)
LHR - London Heathrow Terminal 3 to HKG - Hong Kong International Terminal 1
CX250
Operated by Cathay Pacific
Airbus A350-900

Return date: Wed 15 Nov 2023
Time: 15:10 -> 20:20 (13h 10m)
HKG - Hong Kong International Terminal 1 to LHR - London Heathrow Terminal 3
CX253
Operated by Cathay Pacific
Airbus A350-900

However, I was looking at buying an additional ticket on the return leg of the flight but the flight is not available! It's like it's disappeared! It's not there under Time Table on the CX website but it is there on the Heathrow airport website. The whole flight is confirmed when I login into my CX account though.

I called up CX and they are telling me it's full. They also emailed me the following response:
PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR THE TIME BEING CX253 15 NOVEMBER IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR NEW BOOKING
YOU MAY CALL US LATER TO CHECK FOR SEATS AND QUOTE ON THE FLIGHTS - HOWEVER IT IS NOT GUARANTEED.

I'm not convinced it's full as November is a long way away but I'm no expert on how fast it takes for a flight to be fully booked. My question is, is there a chance the return leg is going to be rescheduled or cancelled, if so, when?

Thank you for any insight,

RealtimeY

It looks like they've stopped sales on it and are likely to formally cancel it in the near future, at which point you would be reaccommodated or be allowed to switch to an alternative flight of your choice. There's no way of knowing when they'll do that, but until then there's not a lot you can do unfortunately.

brunos

As CX is trying to ramp up their schedule, they currently have no certainty what flights they will operate 8 months from now.
Out of the 5 LHR flights on 15 Nov, they are only currently selling only CX255 and CX251.
But they are currently operating 4 or 5 flights per day and they are very full.
They will open flights. You just have to wait a bit for them to confirm their schedule for November. It might take a couple of months.

Funkygal

Thank you for your response. Do you roughly know when they might notify me?

Funkygal

Thank you for your response. When I searched the date on the CX website, I can see two flights, CX255 and CX251?

JALPak

It really depends on when CX finalizes the winter/November schedule for your route.

Here's a data point for you. My TPE-HKG flight in May was zeroed out in Dec. CX finally canceled the flight last week and notified me on the same day. So I waited for more than 3 months to rebook.

brunos

Apologies, I missed the 11:55pm departure of CX251.

I would bet that they will open some of the other LHR flights, given that they currently fly 4/5 flights per day. When they will do it is anyone guess.
SInce February 2023, the situation is quite different from previous covid years when they were first offering their "normal" schedule and then progressively cancelled many of the "scheduled" flights. It is uncomfortable situation, but you have to wait and see.
It might be useful to create an alert in ExpertFlyer to be advised when they start removing the zero (opening sales) on the top fare buckets of a zeroed flight..

nomadabroad

CX and their entire timetable roulette is a mess, LHR schedule in particular is a whole damn mess. Same flights operating on diff times each day…..changes every few days….HKG-LHR on Oct 28 all 3 flights operating within 1 hour of each other 10:15PM, 10:50PM, and 10:55 PM like what on earth.

my HKG-LHR flight in Oct has dissapeared now…god knows what is happening.

In all honesty did they hire some incompetent rookie intern for their scheduling department? Very wishy washy with everything……trying to ramp up your Ops does not mean you need to screw and mess up your entire schedule and flip flop every few days…..how are people supposed to have confidence what they booked will actually fly….when flights are getting re-scheduled and disappearing on a daily basis

Cambo

Actually, it's not only HKG-LHR, it's all over the place.
For now, it did heavily influence my CX flying. I largely moved all my flying to SQ.

Would that hurt CX ? I don't think so, the demand is that high vs. available capacity at CX, they just can afford these things (for now).

Positive for me is, needing to plan farther out, my tickets got cheaper than before Covid-19, despite flying SQ.

Michaelb1

I’m in the same situation. I just booked a flight to Asia on JAL for Sept even though CX was $1000 usd cheaper. (BOS-MNL, E). I can’t afford to risk booking with CX, having it cancelled, then paying 5k usd at that late point for anything else available. CX was my go to airline pre-covid but until they can come up with a stable schedule I will be sticking with other carriers. JAL has been running daily from BOS to NRT reliably for almost a year now, CX has been selling daily but cancelling all but one day per week.

nomadabroad

yeah agreed it wouldn’t hurt them in the short term given the temporary pent up demand, some won’t have a choice but to go with whatever schedule change CX has got planned but this will definitely leave a bitter taste for the more time sensitive pax who will often need to leave/arrive within a very specific time window….you book an afternoon flight from HKG as you need arrive in LHR the same day but CX decides to cancel and flip flop all flights so now you are stuck with the night departures which means you either leave a day earlier or arrive a day later….it is a pain

the competition is getting stronger too with BA running 2x daily (pretty consistent schedule AFAIK), QR back to 2x daily as well to HKG…they need to get their sh*t together else this whole schedule roulette is just throwing their reputation and reliability down the drain