I have an upcoming CX flight (Business Lite) which has been scheduled to land 20 minutes later than the original time. I was already a bit nervous about the late arrival and this only makes me more nervous.

Am not looking for a refund but I would be SO much happier with changing to an earlier flight, esp as I’ll have a minor with me. This is something I have done successfully with other airlines flying on basic Economy tickets, including Air China. However, on this occasion I need an OTA to do this for me and the timeframe for the OTA to get back to me keeps getting pushed forward.

Is this going to be a problem with CX?

CX will do whatever to say its OTA problem. OTA will do whatever to say its not permitted due to farerule. You need to convince ur OTA. part of reason i only ever buy air ticket from airlines direct.

if you asking for earlier flight due to 20min delay i would say that is totally rEasonable

The OTA (trip.com, I’m a Diamond+ member) did acquiesce to CX, and in the meantime gave me the runaround over 4 days with lots of missed self imposed deadlines and broken promises to provide feedback/updates.

Your opinion that my request was reasonable helped my confidence and having been told by the OTA that the ticket couldn’t be changed I contacted CX directly by phone. I persisted, got through to a supervisor, explained my case and a compromise was found that I am entirely happy about (the alternative flight that suited us best plopped us out of the 24 hour layover window which introduced a few more taxes, these were reasonable and all other change fees were waived). CX sent me an email and I paid the taxes directly with them.

Trip.com is a little worse than Expedia when it comes to things like this. My view is that if you have status at Expedia, the level of service is on par with the level of service if you have status at one of the airlines or hotel chains, at least on dealings with hotels. They have gotten hotels to give a full refund for cancellation inside the cancellation deadline etc. for me. I havn't had to test getting them to do something completely off menu with an airline yet but they don't charge anything to cancel within the first 24 hours-ish of booking whereas trip.com charges a nominal fee.

It sounds like you got this sorted without having to do so but FYI - you can also pay CX USD60 to make changes to an agent ticket if you're in a bind. I have done this on CX and other airlines in the past when my corporate travel agent was being particularly useless.

"If you booked through a travel agent, you can make changes to your booking for a fee of USD60/HKD470 by contacting Customer Care."
https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_...el-refund.html

This was mentioned to me by the first agent (before I spoke to a supervisor). The fee for circumventing the OTA and getting our tickets changed would have been about 450Euros each PLUS the USD60 fee. The compromise the supervisor came up with (the only taxes option) was much, much better, but it’s only something that was arrived at because of the Involuntary Schedule Change. Had that not been part of the story, the charge to change an agency ticket would have been the way to go.

jimyvr reported that CX will increase weekly frequency to FUK from 10 to 16 for the summer 2026 season. Currently, there are 12 flights per week (1 flight on MF, 2 on other days).

Source: https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/260223-cxns26fuk