Just flew down in C class on KA from Chongqing to Hong Kong, connecting onto BKK.

I boarded promptly in CKG and just about 10' before departure a guy with an economy BP comes and plonks himself next to me. The cabin attendant is really quick and comes over to "discuss" the matter. The guy is loud and obnoxious. He says that he was booked on the CA codeshare that was scheduled 1 1/2 hours earlier but it had been cancelled and that KA had promised him an upgrade as compensation because they had not advised him early enough and they had spoilt his day!!! (I almost choked on my water). So what were they going to do with the other passengers on that flight??

Anyway, it gets better because then the cabin attendant says that an upgrade on board would be HKD 2000. He shouts that there is no way that he is paying that as on the ground they said it would only be HKD 500. (So what happened to the complimentary upgrade??) Anyway he goes round and round with the flight attendant getting louder and louder until he says that he will complain to the Chairman of CX who is a personal friend of his (If that is the case the Chairman has no taste...) about the stupid person that she is (and other various insults).

At this point it is getting too much and too loud for me. I stand up and tell him that if he is not willing to pay then to get his arse back to the economy seat that he has paid for and that I have no intention of putting up with his crap for any longer. Finally he ends up departing for the back. I wrote a commendation for the flight attendant saying the she had remained firm but polite just in case the jerk actually does complain about her.

What a total and utter jerk!

Thank you for getting involved.

Too many people just sit passively and let negative behavior be rewarded, so it is nice to hear of someone acting positively.

very obvious that person is a mainlander.....but I can say that this flight attendent was very calm on handling this matter, if this happened on an american carrier, the result would be very bad for that person

The earlier flight should be a CA flight. The second flight is the KA flight that is codeshared by CA. He contradicted himself in whether he was promised a complimentary or HKD500 upgrade. However, when he was pushed on to the KA flight by CA, he might be promised something by CA. Regardless, he should understand that if he was given a Y BP, he had to sit in Y.

These things seldom happen on CX and KA. They happen more on some other airlines. On UA, it is quite usual that some Y passengers wander around to the E+ section and take a seat.

I am glad you helped out.

Hong Kong passengers go by the rules, but I am not going to stereotype mainland passengers. That happens on UA often too - from EY to E+. These passengers are mainly non-Asians. Some of them also have that DYKWIA attitude when approached by the FAs.

FA these days are just having a hard time, have to deal with pressure from all around them

That's really a jerk,he thinks he knows everyone in this world ? including the chairman of CX,if he really know chairman of CX i dont think he need to pay for his flight and argue with flight attendant.

im glad you did the right thing
and make that fat arse move to the economy class!!!!

sometime people just take it for granted, and mainlander has some kind of different pride??
to me being able to get to point A and point B, safely is most important. great service is something extra, well of course we pay for that!

Will CX actually black list trouble-passenger? like the crazy lady on youtube or this jerk?

Quite the contrary, CX rewarded that lady. That perhaps inspired the pax being discussed in this thread...

Thanks for the support. I hesitated before getting involved, but as the guy had plopped himself down next to me I guess I was involved anyway!

Just for those speculating about whether he was a mainlander or not, he was (like me) caucasian, and I would guess, from somewhere down under...

I don't know why in cases like this people would often very quickly go to the conclusion it's mainlanders, but frankly out of my 10+ years of extensive flying globally and within the region, with quite some domestic Chinese flights, I have never seen mainland Chinese pushing their ways into J/F cabins on the plane. well, Chinese might not necessarily be used to the queueing culture yet, but at least they seem to know their seat numbers and the ticket they bought and don't push for something they didn't pay for and feel perfectly ok being in Y.

instead, I have seen multiple cases of Caucasians/non-Asians doing it, and yes, poor FAs having to deal with these situations. in one situation I remember seeing the FAs doing a head count and finding one more person than what should have been, and finally discovering one of the pax didn't belong to the cabin. he argued that he misread his seat assignment or sth like that, and after some fussing around moved back to Y.

and of course I have seen way too many DYKWIA cases of people seeing a loooong F/J boarding queue (since all MPOs including GR are eligible), and going straight to the front of the line and showing their J boarding pass (but to be fair to them, if they didn't fly CX/KA enough they probably didn't know this weird rule and never expected a F/J line longer than Y). anyway, in many cases I have seen, the gate FAs dare not to say/do anything (esp when it's Caucasians) but to accept that one or two boarding passes and let them go...but in some cases when it became serious enough (i.e. it becoming like 2 queues), I have voiced out and said both to the FAs and the pax there's a lot of people queueing already and the queue is way back there. I clearly remember in one instance where the pax then showed me his J boarding pass and said, in a DYKWIA tone, 2 words, "business class" - to which I immediately pulled out my boarding pass and showed him and said "first class".

Just like how some pax show their coloured BPs out of their shirt pocket.

^^^ to tedhl... what was the reaction on his face?

Probably as red as the CX F BP.. That is cool!

lol lol lol.

i was flying Sydney to London in Business Class, and there was a racist security guard monitoring the queue. He noticed that I wasn't caucasian yet i was standing in the J queue, and in the same tone as you described he said "this is the business class queue. you are supposed to be in the economy queue over there" I took out my confirmation and he was shocked.

In a similar event, flying back from Japan to Australia, the FA was shocked to see that we were all in Business Class, and actually double-checked our boarding passes to make sure she had read them correctly.

On another occasion flying Emirates, a couple ahead of us were in the business class boarding queue. I saw the FA in the economy queue telling the business FA to get the passengers to come to the economy queue. When they reached the front the Economy FA questioned them, but they were flying Business!

It's funny how people always make these judgements.

Complete agree. Associating behaviour with ethnic groups can be dangerous. There can be plenty of misconceptions, in part because of one's limited exposures, and in part because there are also many, many exceptions.

In the end, it will be the person's behaviour that determines whether he/she should be respected. Those who command respect are those who know how to respect and abide by rules. The DYKWIA attitude is uncalled for.