freofan

Hi Folks,

Fairly new to Flyertalk so I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum. Howevever I'm travelling to Phuket from Perth via Singapore. Our plan is to travel PER - SIN with QF and SIN - HKT with Jetstar Asia (I've always wanted to experience a the asian QF investment).

Problem is that for the entire month of April JQAsia are fully booked on the SIN - HKT route! There are fares available for relatively cheap prices on other carriers (Silkair, Tiger) as well as cheap fares on JQAsia for most of the days towards the end of March.

Having found no available seats online I called JQ in Singapore to question whether there was an error. They informed me that all flights to HKT are booked out for April.

My question is, does this likely mean that JQAsia are dropping the route? Or are they genuinely full for an entire month when other carriers (including tiger who also only have one flight per day on the route) are showing availability at reasonable prices?

Cheers, Freofan

DownUnderFlyer

Most probably they have just not loaded the flight information yet. Even the PDF timetables are only valid to 29 March.

freofan

Is that not suspicious?

I mean, what sort of airline can survive by only loading flight information on their web based booking engines (which I assume make up a majority of their bookings) less than three weeks out from the date of booking/flight?

perthite

It looks rather odd. The QF online timetable only lists SIN-HKT on Friday mornings, but no return flight.

moa999

I would say very suspicious that they are dropping SIN-HKT from 1 Apr. Noting lots of other flights from SIN are loaded at this point

I would also note that that is more the 'low' season in Phuket as it gets very hot and you get more big storms. You are typically better off on the East Coast at that time (eg. Ko Samui)

High season is Nov-Mar from memory

perthite

According to a report here: http://www.straitstimes.com/ST%2BFor...ry_213704.html, they're stoppping flying between SIN and HKT.

moa999

Good to see the 3K call-centre does not know the difference between sold-out flights and flights that has been removed from the schedule.

The straitstimes article is even more scary for an international flight although seems to fit with JQs approach in Australia - despite having you email, phone etc, they expect you to find out if they alter your flights and won't make proactive contact

GibSpmuh

I've had the experience before with 3K when I checked my flight a week beforehand in the booking engine and it was showing as sold out. I phoned them up and they assured me that the flight was still running, it was just sold out. On the morning of my flight I get a phone call telling me actually that the flight has been cancelled due to maintenance, hope another flight is suitable for you instead.

nemofly

The moral of the story is Buyer Beware!

LCCs are just sitting pretty on the concept of Budget fare.

It is cheap until something goes wrong.

LCC 101 -

1) High aircraft utilisation and tight scheduling - good chance of flight cancellation and massive delays when 1 plane AOGs in some exotic part of the world.

2) route profitability - If seats sales are low, cancel the flight and try not to inform anybody. (Too resource intensive to inform every customer)

3) Never promise anything - check their conditions of carriage . They do not promise the exact time and date of carriage. Just the promise of transporting a customer from point a to b (at the carrier's convenience)

4) Pass the buck . Baggage loss, acts of god, flight delays are to be claimed from customer's insurance. (We operate on tight cost control)

5) Keep employees cost down to the minimium - Customer self-help encouraged from discovering flight cancellation via web-site or word of mouth

6) Customer service costs should be minimised at all cost! -

Do not list call centre number, email. Snail mail with 21 days of possible response.

7) Hook them with low fare. Customers will only realise that after paying for taxes, credit card fees (at their convenience), seat selection, pre-boarding charges, meals and drinks, excess baggages and travel insurance , they should have travelled with the regular carriers.

8) Nothing is refundable.....

sxc

I think these 2 points apply to all legacy carriers as well?

nemofly

If you check in your tumi bag and cx loses it, you will be compensated at USD 20 per kg. on 3k, it will be SGD 5 per kg. As a DM, CX will probably offer you a replacement tumi.

If CX cancels a flight, DMs will be given priority to go on the next within 6 hours. On an LCC, sorry mate . You be going tomorrow, the day after or when we have sorted out or mess and by the way, go find your own hotel .

nonce

Nemofly: sorry that you don't like LCC's, I guess it is a personal thing. No one is making you fly them. It is interesting however that Jetstar currently has the lowest cancellation rate and highest OTP of any jet airline in Australia.

It isnt really fair to compare JQ with CX. Both are targetting different markets. I am pretty sure that JQ isn't targeting those who fly with Tumi luggage. Actually I am not sure why anyone would fly with Tumi luggage, it is heavy and from a cost per use, even if you used it every day it is still going to fail at the same time as a bag that was 1/7th the price (such as Antler).

For example, my Antler litestream weighs 2.4kg, compared with just over 4kg for the Tumi. The Antler cost me $AU 103 and failed after 3 years (around 250 sectors) due to airline mishandling and was then replaced FOC by Antler, even though airline abuse isn't covered under warranty.

I also wouldnt be so sure that the legacy or full service carriers will look after you. Recently I was caught up in a tropical low which meant I missed my QF flight due to conditions being too dangerous to travel by boat from an island resort off the coast (100 km) of Queensland. QF's response, was "too bad". We ended up being evacuated by helicopter back to the mainland (at the resorts expense) and instead of being able to pick our flights back up again we had to book new tickets after returning back home to Sydney in order to resume our journey.

While many people warn you off the cheaper brands I am really not sure you *always* get what you pay for with the more expensive ones.

Kiwi Flyer

Jetstar Asia is a different airline to Jetstar in Australia so I don't understand the relevance of JQ's reliability to 3K.

nzed

Getting back to the topic, I have been trying to book HKT/SIN 28 March (no problems) and SIN/HKT on 29 March, which happens to be the last day of the schedule. The schedule shows a flight on the 29th evening but online booking shows nothing.

I contacted the Bangkok Call Center and they don't seem to have much of a clue - it looks like it's going to be Tiger for this trip.

serfty

SGD 5 per Kg is incorrect; at the very least, the "Warsaw Convention" would apply.

The Warsaw convention allows for maximum compensation based on the weight of your baggage. This is defined as 17 XDR's per Kilogram (1.00 XDR = ~1.64 USD) or ~USD28 (even though an airline may try to limit this).