VictoriaMartini

Wanting to swap for a business class flight LONDON to ANY AUSTRALIAN destination departing FROM 26th December 2020 UNTIL 2nd January 2021.

Family illness driving date change.

LondonElite

Welcome to FT!

Perhaps you can explain a little better what exactly you are looking for?

You can't swap airline tickets with other people. The traveller named on the ticket must travel. Have you called CX to ask them what options you have? Are you permitted to enter Australia?

VictoriaMartini

I am an Australian permanent resident with a one off exemption from the Australian government to travel to the UK to visit my mother, who was diagnosed with an aggressive, incurable brain tumour in September.
My intention has always been to spend her final Christmas together. My original flight with Cathay was booked to return 31st of December, but on the 17th November (by which time I had already travelled to the UK) the second leg was cancelled. The only alternative return offered to Australia was departing 12th December.
I have been chasing my travel agent and calling Cathay in Hong Kong relentlessly the last week. The airline has confirmed today they are unable to help me change flights.
I hoped if another passenger out there was willing to exchange flights, perhaps Cathay could arrange the ticket transfer (happy to pay admin fees).
I simply can't give up on this.

LondonElite

I'm sorry to hear about your situation, but what you want to do is not possible. You can't swap tickets with another passenger. I understand that there are few flights into Australia these days, but it is up to your travel agent to work with CX to find an alternate date in the future. The rules of your ticket may not allow that, or make it very expensive, but it is up to your travel agent to get that arranged.

etiene

If the original flights were cancelled then there ought to be no fees for changing to a suitable alternative set of flights, surely, but all of this must as you say run through the travel agent.

VictoriaMartini

Correct, there are no fees and my agent has been searching relentlessly but no availability for date changes until February. I need to be back in Australia by the 3rd January; I have 4 small children and we are relocating from Sydney to Brisbane.
I though there might be a passenger already booked on a Cathay flight who would prefer an earlier flight back to Sydney. However I appreciate Cathay can't email passengers asking this, hence posting to this forum.

percysmith

It may be possible if you know somoene in CX who can pull strings and get to the top of the waiting list. But if you're asking another passenger to swap with you, you or your TA are asking CX to prioritise both you and the other passenger on the top of your queues for you respective days.

You cannot swap directly. Let me use one of my own pre-COVID family examples to illustrate.
I, my mother and my brother's family were originally ticketed to go to Singapore for a Chinese New Year. Mother was optimistically expecting I can get away the morning of the day before Chinese New Year and ticketed my seat.
I have a roster at work and when the roster came out I drew the short straw, I cannot get away until the evening of the day before.
Mother then wanted to change my seat to my brother's mother in law. Our TA at the time set said no.
Mother then got completely pushy - I think the terms "use your special relationship with Cathay to get this done" and "this is a very reasonable and commonsense request" was used. (My mother is like this. She asked me to "look at things from her perspective" to plan a trip for 2021 Chinese New Year too, as if a worldwide pandemic and quarantine measures didn't exist)
No, brother's MIL stayed on waitlist. Brother's MIL cleared eventually, but Mother never gave any more business to that TA after ten years of patronage.

The rule is your seat will go to the next in queue once you release it. It is not up to you to swap seats with another passenger, unless you know CX board members (I've seen it happen for the first time this year).
Have you looked at entering Australia from the US? That was my original strategy for getting someone home quickly, until I saw the pull strings case happen.

LondonElite

I suspect it’s a question of actual operating capacity, which to Australia is very low now.

LondonElite

Even if you find someone willing to swap with you on a later flight operated by CX, you can’t change tickets. It doesn’t work like that. It is simply a complete non-starter. And if there were a later, CX-operated flight, your travel agent should be able to get you on that, no need for all this effort.

LondonElite

What OP wants to do is different, namely swapping tickets in the (non-existent) secondary market. Neither passenger’s ticket will be recalibrated to the others’ travel date.

percysmith

If I had pull I could. I would have both passengers waitlist for each other's (presumably full) flights, have my pull bump them to the top of the queue and then simultaneously cancel their confirmed seats. The waitlists will clear.

Obviously this is not what OP had in mind. She thought she can just swap dates as if she's holding concert tickets - my mother's "reasonable and commonsense" approach. Airline waitlists don't work that way.

She wants earlier. She knows they are all full so she is trying swap idea.

LondonElite

With the strained demand and supply situation at the moment, I can’t see this happening.

percysmith

The US method works but it will cost OP:

CXFlyerBoy

Can you not cancel the second leg and book with SQ?
i guess desperate times calls for desperate measures.

SQ is still selling LHR-SIN-SYD sub 5K in business

LondonElite

OP would not be admitted to the US having been in the UK during the previous 14 days.