first experience on cathay not good...
 

had a flight from shanghai to hong kong to taipei . Dragonair wanted me to take an eariler flight to HKG so i did, they did not inform cathay of the change and cathay gave up my seat now everyhting is 00000 for the day.

i booked everything through cathay.

stuck in HKG

How did Dragonair WANT you to take an earlier flight??

Ok let me explain the whole situation....

so i was going from shanghai to taipei through hong kong
bought the ticket on cathay
but first flight was a codeshare with dragon air
i get to the airport and they said oh you can get on the earlier flight from shanghai to Hong Kong. so they gave me a ticket for the ealier flight.

get to HK at 11 am, flight to taipei is at 1. I stopped by the transfer desk to confirm my flight at 1 with cathay. They said it's all good and put the gate number on the ticket.

dink around go the gate at like 12 try to get on the flight and it beeps, i was like great biz class upgrade :)

NO dragon air never told cathay i was on the eailer flight my original flight was delayed and i would never make the connection, so cathay gave up my seat and every flight to taipei was over booked.

After 40 minutes of dragon blaming Cathay, and Cathay blaming Dragon, and trying to get on China airlines, Cathay got me a comfirmed seat on a later flight.

First problem..

Why did Dragon air not change my itin to reflect the earlier flight?
Why didn't cathay once they gave my seat up, automatically rebook me the later flight?

I asked for a coupon to get a water and was refused by Dragon and Cathay.

Doesn't sound to good at all. Surprising for CX/KA who are IME outstanding on the ground and in the air.

Aren't they the "same" airline already after CX bought KA? They should share the same system, isn't it? Sound very strange for me...

One is to have the problem in the first place.

I am more disappointed in how the gate agents from cathay and the dragon air guy that showed up at the gate. Poor poor management...Than i ran half ways around the airport to get on the china airlines flight , than to be told that it was overbooked and we were just checking. Gate 34 to 71 and than back to 36. If you have been to HKG you know those are close at all.

CX/KA coshares definitely needs improvement.

Although I have never experienced any problems personally, I have seen lots of passengers complaining.

One of the most common arguments was a family of 3 or 4 with children were traveling from a Mainland city to TPE via HKG. For some unknown reason, they were seated separately on the flight from HKG to TPE. KA ground staff was helpless while being yelled by the passenger before boarding.

I recall witnessing this more than 3-4 times while boardng on a KA flight.

Codeshare has a lot of unknown side effects. There are different revenue and liability implications. It is a lot more restrictive when it comes to changing flights. OLCI may help, but if they think you will miss the plane, they may still give up your seat.

This situation is probably bad because of the weekend and the Dragonboat Festival. Although CX and KA are still practically two different airlines, I am surprised that CX could not be more accommodating.

As far as separating a family in seat assignments, KA is not unique. However, some airlines block off seats for assignment at the airport so that the check-in agent has some control over people traveling together - otherwise family on group tickets may not be sitting together with other passengers grapping the best seats at OLCI. I do not know whether KA is doing that.

This is not typical of CX. You had really bad luck with this flight.

I'm confused. Did they give you a boarding pass for the flight at 1pm with Cathay or not? if not then surely you should have asked for one? If they did then are you saying that the boarding pass was rejected at the gate?

This all smells very fishy to me.

yes i got my boarding pass for row 34h when i checked with dragon air. I stopped by the transfer desk to confirm when i landed in HKG, they confirmed it and put gate 34 on the ticket for me.

Than everyone went south, i am thinking the transfer desk just found the cx xxx flight and put the gate and didn't look at my reservation.

So i had a ticket in hand for the flight they kicked me off

If you had a Boarding Pass with a seat number on it for the HKG-TPE flight that you wanted to be on then I really don't know what went on here - someone must have manually unchecked you from the flight. I would write to CX and ask for an explanation of what went wrong, supplying the ticket number and the boarding number for each of the flights.

... and then wait several months for a standardised semi-apologetic letter from KA, or maybe it will come from CX? :p

This is a classic case of the left hand doesn't know where the right hand is.

BTW, MNAudiS4, the flight that you ended up taking from HKG to TPE, was it the one that you were originally going to take, and if not, did that get you there earlier or later than originally planned?

It was not my original flight, that was booked. I think it actually left with 1 open Biz seat they wouldn't give me. Not completely sure. Than they brought me across the airport to get on a china eastern flight that was overbooked, so than we went all the way back to the orig gate and i demanded a bording pass for at least one of the flights later in the day. I had my KVS availability chart up and i said there is at least 1 biz seat on the 430 flight which was 3 hrs later, they would not give me that seat. She did some stuff for 20 minutes, calling people than got me on a flight 2 hrs later. Last row in the middle.

Does anyone have emails for customer service from dragon and cathay?

Thanks

It was not my original flight, that was booked. I think it actually left with 1 open Biz seat they wouldn't give me. Not completely sure. Than they brought me across the airport to get on a china eastern flight that was overbooked, so than we went all the way back to the orig gate and i demanded a bording pass for at least one of the flights later in the day. I had my KVS availability chart up and i said there is at least 1 biz seat on the 430 flight which was 3 hrs later, they would not give me that seat. She did some stuff for 20 minutes, calling people than got me on a flight 2 hrs later. Last row in the middle.

Does anyone have emails for customer service from dragon and cathay?

Thanks

Since when did China Eastern fly to TPE?