JL09 tomorrow, extensive delays, options?
Would appreciate any thoughts or advice..
I'm on the JL09 tomorrow (07 January, at least tomorrow on a US timezone) on a one way avios award in first class from ORD-NRT-HKG, all with JAL with two passengers. We were due to connect to the JL735 on the same day (business since no first on the intra-Asia flight) Unfortunately the plane departure has been seriously delayed, first till 2pm (leaving a 50 minute, still possible, short connection) and now to 4pm. This means an arrival in Tokyo around 8pm,rather than 3pm, so rather a long 5hr delay. I presume this is due to the bad weather in the east coast of the US. We'd really like to return on time on Monday 8th. I do appreciate jal giving a lot of notice (over 24 hours) of the delays mind. Rerouting options don't seem great, I can see the following options,if we weren't to take our new flight times: - CX direct, but only one seat in first and two in business. At least this way we'd arrive in Hong Kong on Monday as scheduled. May be the best alternative flight but means no first I presume. - Take the new flight times and overnight in NRT - Ask for a reroute on Ana, which is around the same flight time as my original flight... Presumably not really something they'd like. - Various other rerouting options with oneworld but all of which arrive on Tuesday anyway so aren't a good option. Before I make the call/go to the airport, wondered if anyone had any advice on these two points : 1. If we do have to overnight will JAL give us a hotel room? 2. How flexible is JAL typically with rerouting, if at all? At the moment it seems like we have to just miss another day of work and take the original, delayed, flight. Not ideal but may be the best option. Thanks for any views! Any compensation seems to be a lost cause as far as I can tell so I'll claim on my travel insurance. Edit : I did try to call, Japan as other offices closed, to get 70 minutes of hold music before I gave up. Tried a lot of different routes meanwhile but didn't find any better availability than my original ones above... |
Well, for future prosperity this is what happened, so others can learn. About three hours after my post the scheduled delay was extended to 5 hours, so a definite connection miss (of ~2 hours).
In conclusion I wasn't overly impressed - both Cathay and BA have dealt with my recent IRROPs far better considering that they are managing 2 oneworld emeralds (wife is also BA Gold), on F/J tickets (sometimes paid, sometimes miles). Maybe I am just too used to everything being fixed before the flight rather than just leaving everything till passengers get to the main hub, but it leaves uncertainty. I didn't then appreciate them putting us onto flights with cheap seats available rather than just rebooking onto any flight with availability that is an easier transit. To anyone else reading this, consider whether you really want to transfer to HND... it's a bit of a pain in the ... and not what you want after a 13 hour flight, even if it was in First. As a consequence I won't be going out of my way to take another JAL flight. So for our next trips to Japan we will stick to Cathay - whilst we really liked the Japanese food menu on JAL it isn't worth the general risk of hassle and I thought the JAL regional seat was equally as bad as Cathay's (ok, maybe marginally better, but the entertainment was far older/worse). |
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