fallinasleep

Anyone have experience trying to standby for an earlier flight on China Airlines?

Flying HKG-TPE later this month and would like to take an earlier flight if possible. Planning to get to the airport early if loads on the earlier departures look accommodating.

Thanks

nldogbert

From my recent experience (last month), this will NOT be possible for free unless you pay the differences in fare/change fees. I purchased my ticket via an OTA and even if I was willing to pay (if the difference was small) it was not possible as they could not find the value of the ticket. Therefore, they could not redo any calculation of the fare differences. Even as a ST E+ (which CI does seem to put some value to) did not help in this situation (was trying a bit of DYKWIA - as I had a layover of 5 hours - since I was connecting a separate ticket) as the friendly lady did try and help when I brought it up to her while checking in.

In this protest period this is such a PITA - as my flight (and most probably majority of their flights) are going close to empty (mine was < 30% load on an A330) - at least based on the availability of the flights I checked.

OTOH, a couple of days later, back in HKG, I was flying with Thai to BKK, and they were more reasonable and did not even had to go through such a PITA procedure directly at the check-in desk when asking, I was moved FOC to an earlier flight.

No idea why CI is so "traditional" even for what I see as a shuttle service. [I believe CX is also quite lenient in for these flights - at least from TPE station from experience].

Cheers!