Cathay Pacific - Extremely poor service
 

From one of the top airlines in the past, CX has dropped so far down in terms of service quality. Our recent flights for the holiday season were affected by CX’s seriously poor quality. From treating customers like second class citizens and booting out our seats (because we redeemed our tickets rather than bought them, albeit using our own hard earned points), to the entertainment system not working for a long haul flight for nearly the whole cabin. Although I am a long-term, loyal, top tier member of Asia Miles, I am seriously thinking of switching allegiances. Formal complaints have also been ignored by the airline. Do they still care? Such a waste and such a poor representative of Hong Kong. Please improve and improve quickly

Mind to share how you were booted?

Could our ‘Top tier Asia Miles member’ share some details please?

On a recent flight on a 35J, seems all IFE in J class suffers the same problem - the picture element in the screen could not be displayed in all pages, although the content could be played normally. The ISM has to response to a number of call lights about this error and keep explaining to pax that they can view the movies/TV shows as usual.

The latter has happened to me before albeit never on Cathay. Actually not sure if it's worse than having your own system be the only one not working and resets not helping, which I've also seen even more. In that case everyone is happily enjoying movies while you're stuck with an inferior product all alone!

I've seen it happen enough on various carriers that I always have some reading material or downloaded movies on an iPad or something as an alternative. And it has happened often enough that this has come in handy!

1) This requires a slightly longer explanation, please bear with me. As a family of four, we redeemed our tickets over 9 months prior to the trip. However, even though we were redeeming so far in advance, we were only able to redeem two business class and two premium economy class seats. Please note that all the seats were redeemed with the same amount of points. As I am a Asia Miles diamond member, I assigned myself and one of my children to the premium economy seats and my spouse and the other child to the business class seats, hoping that with my higher member status we could get the extra biz class seats ahead of the trip. Unfortunately that did not happen. At the check-in counter we tried to upgrade the seats again but was informed that CX was not releasing any more seats for redemption, despite the fact that half the seats on business class were empty (and as it happens 2/3rd of the premium economy seats were also empty). At this point, I informed the staff at the check-in counter that we, as a family, would be swapping seats for the flight, which they confirmed would not be a problem. When we boarded the flight, my kids decided they wanted to sit together in premium economy to watch films together during the flight, so my wife and I took the biz seats instead. We informed the respective cabin crew members of this arrangement, which they confirmed was not a problem. So far so good. However, as we were about to take off, the inflight service manager approached and stated that because child tickets are cheaper than adult tickets, we could not unilaterally swap seats between biz and prem econ. Once I informed her that the tickets were all redeemed and for the same value of points, she begrudgingly left. However, once we were airborne, she returned again with her tablet containing CX regulations and claimed that although the tickets were of the same value, there is a CX rule that required an adult to be in the same cabin class as a child if that child is below 12 years old. My kids are 11 and 14. Not knowing enough about the specific CX regulations to challenge her on that and not wanting to make more of a scene and disturb other passengers, I was essentially booted out of my seat and had to swap back with one of my children. They were not pleased and nor was I. Upon landing, we immediately searched online and find that the rule she claimed was incorrect. Only parents of children under six needs to be in the same cabin class. For kids between 6-12 you just need to be on the same flight and not necessarily in the same cabin class. Please see the relevant clause below. When we challenged this in-flight service manager on this as we were disembarking the flight, she realised she had misquoted the rule and so went back to her original claim that adult and child tickets are different and we we could not unilaterally change seats and should have done so at check in. She was not at fault. Long story short. As customers who redeemed these flights with hard earned points and we felt mistreated
2) Asia Miles Diamond member
3) According to the crew this issue was already present on their outbound flight and the airport engineers claimed it was fixed but when the flight took off, the inflight system failed to work again and could not be fixed mid-flight. They even refused to provide us with complimentary WiFi and we had to pay for it ourselves. This was close to a 9 hour day time flight.

“Travelling with children

For their safety, child passengers aged between 2 and 12 years old travelling on a Cathay Pacific flight need to be accompanied by their parents or guardians (at least 18 years old) at all times. Children under 6 years old must travel in the same cabin class with their parents or guardians.”

please see explanation in response to another question below

I wonder if this was an issue with new staff. I can see them being worried about following the rules and regulations properly to the point of not being flexible about customer service instead. This is a very Hong Kong attitude sadly and it will probably take Cathay time to train it out of the new recruits, both in terms of familiarizing them with the actual content of the rules and getting them to realize customer treatment may sometimes matter more.

For the IFE, this can happen, and nothing they can do. I am sure the staff have no authority to allow free WiFi.

For the seat issue, to be honest from the tone of the post it sounds like they were reacting to a DYKWIA attitude. Not great but also not booted out since you ended up where you were baked and checked in

Also note that changing seats between classes can be done only at the start of the flight and only once. This is to avoid the obvious hack of booking one F seat and 3 Y seats and all rotating through F for a serving of food and wine.

This does sound like an extremely poor experience, some flexibility and proactive service recovery would be extremely helpful. I wonder if you could ask the Inflight Service Manager to provide the regulations they quote since they should have this available to them whether in hard copy or searchable on their online systems. Not that your status should matter, but as a diamond member, I would expect them to go above and beyond to keep that member happy.

I'm taking this account on face value and am aware that there are factors that may contribute to service not occuring as it should. But if I was on this flight, this would annoy me as well.

So let me get the story straight....

The IFE wasn't working immediately after the flight took off already.
Yet your two kids wanted to sit together to watch a movie together. Well after the flight took off, the IFE would have stopped working already. So what was wrong with going back to the original seats you were assigned to??

There might have indeed been an error in the rule the ISM cited. But this story sure sounded like two adults who wanted to sit in J regardless. Especially when this happened even before your kids wanted to watch movie together:
Next time, use your 'hard earned points' and just redeem four seats together in PEY or Y if you really want to be seated together. Problem solved.

On a recent flight from MEL to HKG, which also happened to be a 9-hour day flight, I saw a family who was separated between J and PEY (or Y). I am not sure if half of them were seated in PEY or Y as I was in the front row seats of PEY and never bothered to turn my head and see where they were seated. I am almost certain that one of the family members is a diamond member as I saw them checking-in and their luggage was tagged for first class priority. However, the point I wanted to make was, for the entire flight, the kids were walking back and forth between the cabins, with the mom carrying snacks over from J to their seats from time to time. At one point, one of the FAs even carried one of the kids between the cabins so that they can see their parents during the flight.

As a passenger, I felt sorry for the FA and I only find this to be disturbing. If they want to be seated together as a family then they should buy/redeem their tickets in the same booking class. It doesn't matter if one of them is a diamond member. It's nice that the FA was being attentive and went out of her way to take care of the kids and the passengers, but this should not be taken for granted and cannot be expected as an automatic gesture. It was disruptive to other passengers when people keep walking back and forth between cabins as that inevitably will create noise and inadvertently bumping into other's seat/hand rest. I felt sorry for the FA who had to entertain this "diamond" family to such far extent, as if they don't have other cabin duties to attend to.

Going back to the original OP, I am not implying in any way that what I witnessed was the same group of family. However, if you want your kids to be seated together then you should buy/redeem the same cabin class. I agree it is rather disappointing if your IFE didn't work for a such a long flight and certainly that's something CX needs to work on, but I would imagine if this happened to the entire cabin and if you filed a complaint, CX should provide some sort of compensation. Unfortunately, I do not think the ISM has any authority or power to give you free Wi-Fi access though.

你係國泰幾多年嘅忠實擁躉？

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.

Shouldn't mum be asked to go back and attend to her kid? Foot traffic moves backwards as a general rule, not move forward to the higher cabin. Maybe certain leeway is given because it's a kid but still.

Agree. Also review previous discussion in https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...kids-back.html