CX flight protection due to preceding flight arrival delay
 

I have to do one more status points run in Dec, likely round trip between PVG-HKG-TPE. If the flight from PVG arrives in HKG late (for whatever reasons) and I miss or can never get to gate in time for the TPE flight before gate closes, supposedly there will be flight protection. My question is if my fare is Business Light and if the next available flight only has Business Essential or Flex left, will the protection still allows me to get on this next flight or the protection only allows me to get on flights that still have Business Light available?

Another related question, if their business on all flights are full, and they put me into PEY or EY, will I only get the status points for the PEY/EY. If they do this, I will not have enough status points to requalify for my existing tier and I will have to do additional run before end of Dec.

For IRROPS, fare sub-classes do not matter. PVG and TPE are served multiple times a day. I will be surprised if you do not get on.

The last few times I have taken the PVG-HKG flight, the late-afternoon/early-evening flights have been delayed departure ex-PVG (specifically, I am talking about CX 369 and CX 381 services). This was due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft from HKG-PVG On the other two times leaving PVG and SHA, respectively, in the late-morning/early-afternoon, those flights have departed on time.

If OP is planning CX 381 --> CX 408, and CX 381 is significantly delayed, you will miss the CX 408 connection; the transit time is 60 min between these two flights.

If on a single ticket CX-CX, you will be protected.
If there is any business seat left, you will get it. Fare bucket would not matter (except for a possible priority list if many pax are delayed and few seats available).

I don't know what happens to status points if you are downgraded, but I am afraid that you will be credited for points in the class you travel and compensated monetary.
Of course, you can also choose to wait in HKG for the next flight where J seats are available.
There are like 10 flights to TPE and 8 to PVG, so pad some time in your itinerary to reduce the risks if you wish to.

Initially I was planning to take CX361/CX400 leaving shanghai at 8:40am with only 95 mins transit time in HK. Normally CX361 is relatively on time but yesterday it had delay of almost 2 hours and today's flight was cancelled. To be safer, I now will probably take CX365/CX472 leaving PVG at 9:35am with more than 3 hours transit time, which means it will already be dinner time when I get to Taipei city center.

I was reading a d3consulting newsletter this afternoon which described a similar disruption. The author suggested to claim ORC with contact centre.

The Guangzhou call center told me today that if in the case I have to be downgraded, then I will only get fewer status points for the downgraded cabin class.

I did a point run between TPE-SGN. I think the practice would be to put you on the next available flight (if it is on one ticket).

But there are alternative ways in which CX deal with this. My TPE-HKG flight was delayed on the day and I was offered an alternative flight with another airline (though I think would be a rare occurrence). I made clear that I am doing it only for the points so I asked them to confirm whether I will be credited for whatever that I paid for. These points had since been credited to my account so I think even if they "downgraded" you, you would still be entitled to the points and miles that your original ticket would give.

You probably just need a confirmation from the staff handling this so you get some kind of bare protection if you need to make a claim officially.

Thanks for the suggestion, which leads to another question about confirmation by CX. In what form does a CX confirmation hold validity, written or oral? I could remember at least a couple of cases I experienced where I got positive confirmations from CX which either were wrong or only were valid with a lot of caveat, bordering on being wrong.
- case 1: I returned to HK from Europe at the beginning of Covid, due to border closure I could not return to Europe and 3 sectors were still unused. Two years later, back and forth with CX for months, I got confirmation that my remaining sectors HK-BKK-HK-MAD would be honored and remain valid. I was supposed to travel HK-BKK on a Sat morning and I got the confirmation very early morning on Fri and the agent said they just needed to have the ticket re-issued and if any problem happened, someone from CX would definitely contact me, By Fri 5pm, I still heard nor received nothing, so called CX again, another agent confirmed again that it's being processed. By 9pm, I still received nor heard nothing and I called CX again and they said the tickets could not be reissued and I could only get a partial refund and that's 12 hours before departure. I kept calling different agents and supervisors and all said that it's already outside their power and there is nothing that Ticketing could do anymore and they could only refer me to talk to Customer Care when they were available. I was yelling at them on the phone on the street for more than an hour, not so much because I could not travel but because it would mean no confirmation can ever be trusted as supposedly all previous calls were also recorded and worse still, no one ever contacted me when they rescinded their confirmation. It took a few more days back and forth with Customer Care and initially she offered me the partial refund and together with an probably additional 10K miles. I told her I don't need the miles, and in return I could donate 100K miles to CX to give out to charity and they should honor what they had promised and confirmed. In the end, they could not do anything with the round trip HK-BKK and they honored the HK-MAD part. The agent who initially worked on my case and confirmed it would be re-issued had been actually very diligent, courteous proactive and I don't know where in their internal process and system went wrong.

- case 2 (pre-Covid times): it's about whether luggage can be checked-through involving two different sets of round trip tickets (the trips criss-crossed each other.) I ended up talking to 11-12 different agents, half said yes and half said no. Both sides said they had checked with their supervisors, checked on the Internet, called up the outport, or had experienced similar cases with past passenger, etc. In the end, from what they told me, I figured out that "yes" meant CX HK has to specifically call the outport PVG and told them to go find and pick out my luggage manually from one-trip and then put them onto the other trip. Yes, it might be done but it involved extra work and attention. And I understand why someone said no, because they would assume that the extra work might or could not be done.

Probably no one from CX intentionally wants to make customers and themselves miserable and it's a function of limited staff and inexperience.

These are two different situations.

1. When you get rerouted on another airline, most airlines would allow you to credit your original routing to their own FFP. In addition, you can claim the miles on the rerouted airline, e.g. if it is *A credit to a *A FFP.

2. When you get downgraded on the same airline (CX), you usually get the miles (and status points) in the class you travelled. Then you can claim some monetary compensation for the downgrade and hope for a goodwill miles gift. In many countries there is a consumer protection law that might kick in for the cancellation and set the rules. Not in Asia.

I would never rely on some information provided by the ground staff. It is nothing official, nor reliable.

I did not know I can also claim in addition for the miles on the rerouted airline. Thanks for the tip.

I agree also that any confirmation from ground staff is itself unreliable. I don't think I mean it as an absolute right but what I mean is more a springboard that you can go crazy on in getting something in return further down the line.

Probably the conclusion now is if you get downgraded on your next available flight and you voluntarily take it instead of waiting for a J class seat, you waive the right to claim for points and miles accorded to the original ticket.

Many posters have found that the collective wisdom of experienced flyers on FT is often more reliable than what some ground or call center staff try to answer when you ask a question not in the scope of their job.
It might take a few incorrect posts to converge to the right conclusion, but it is often better than some answer from a CX agent who has no knowledge/experience/training on that type of question.