N1120A

If it is true that B0 are putting people on other carriers, it might be worth it for people with a touch of flexibility to book them and either get a pretty decent product for cheap or get an even better product and miles.

Nancy Colson

Yes, it is true that they are re-booking on other carriers in Business Class. I gather everyone bumped last night, got out last night or this morning. I know one person was in Upper Class on Virgin.

jesslonguf

La Compagnie offered 3 options for cancelled flight passengers: (1) refund and a free future flight on La Compagnie, (2) stay in hotel overnight with allowance for food and taxi and then La Compagnie books you in business class the next day on another airline or (3) get a refund, wait until the next La Compagnie flight 3 days later, and try to get a spot on it.

Most people from my flight went with option 1 because they were locals who could just head back home. This was my return flight, though, so I went with 2. Though I ended up on Delta and had a much nicer flight than I would have had with La Compagnie, I had to wait until 5:30am or so the next day to actually receive this flight information. It was overall a pretty stressful and exhausting experience, which I do not recommend even if you are flexible with your travel dates unless you really enjoy staying in subpar motels near airports with bad food and no communication. I believe my time is worth more than the savings. I wish I had waited a bit on booking so that I could have taken advantage of OW's CDG sale.

Nancy Colson

Did they ever tell you why they cancelled at the last minute?

lainnj

We have just been informed that our flight from Newark to Luton on May 17 (tomorrow) will be operated by Hi Fly, a Portuguese charter airline. They say it's business class. Definitely nervous, and nervous about getting back in two weeks.

Nancy Colson

Let us know how it goes. I'm flying them in two weeks, and despite continued reassurance from their corporate office, I am very nervous about it.

oliver2002

HiFly isn't that bad, they did flights for Norwegian and SAS. An example:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/sas-e...-wetlease.html

Problem is they have quite a few configurations: http://www.hifly.aero/en/a330/cs-tqp

Nancy Colson

I have to say I feel like La Compagnie is doing everything in their power to keep things moving while they work through these start up glitches. I have spoken to a number of people who have flown the Paris route and they were very pleased. I am still willing to give it a shot. Not that I have much choice... I leave two weeks from Thursday. Fingers crossed.

max21ge

Just flew with them yesterday EWR-CDG and was worried but everything was smooth. On-time (except some taxi delays in EWR because of the weather) great seat good service and AMAZING price. Couldn't be more pleased it was my third time flying with them and I hope they stay in business!

shablamb

Tomorrow (May 20) flight from EWR-Luton just changed (via e-mail at 10:13 am - ~36 hour notice) to a HiFly A-340. Same departure time. I called to confirm seat map/selection for my wife and I, but was told by the agent she did not have access to the seat map. The agent was extremely nice, but couldn't do much.

Any trip reports from the HiFly product - most importantly, how did they assign seats?

Based on limited research, HiFly's A-340 operate with 10-12 F (2-2-2), 30-42 J (2-3-2), and 200+ coach. So call it 50 "premium" seats, vs. the 74 available on their 757s. If fully booked, there is a definite shortfall.

I'll try to post a brief trip report after I arrive.

Nancy Colson

Correct me if I am wrong but it looks as though HiFly has several A-340s with different configurations. If I were you, I'd get to the airport early.

Did they give any explanation?

When I e-mailed corporate concerning HiFly this was the response I got:

"During the period when an aircraft has to undergo regular maintenance checks (in the industry we call this c-Check) it is absolutely common that another aircraft is serving the designated routes. This is the case for our flights on May 17 and 18. We see no reason why your flight on June 4 should not be operated by our own aircraft."

Clearly the 17th & 18th has also become the 20th!

chalf

HiFly has various configurations on its A340s, though 54 does seem to be the largest combined F/J. See http://www.hifly.aero/en/a340/cs-tqm

jenecho

I am watching avidly as have a short break booked next week. As we are only going for three days I can't afford for them to start cancelling flights or moving my dates around!

Just looked at the Hi FLy configurations- the 9H-SEA one has 45 business and 38 PE. I would be worried that they might use the PE ones given that La Compagnie is already mid-way between PE and Bus. Maybe their flights wont be full and 54 seats between 1st/Bus in one of the other configurations is sufficient. But the seats in the CS configurations all look pretty shoddy- 2-3-2 in business? The Business seats in the 9H-SEA pictures look much better- Virgin style diagonal pods.

Oh well, we shall see!

oliver2002

Looks like CS-TQY has been deployed for B0 6/7 service:

http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/cs-tqy/

HiFlys website still shows CS-TQY with the EK interiors. I doubt that is still the case.

jenecho

Thanks Oliver. Sorry to be dense- what is EK? Do you mean you think they will have been refitted past the pictures?