So, I am sitting here, trying to sleep on the floor of the Air China lounge in HKG. My b/f and I just spent a wonderful weekend here and even got to see the Olympic torch run right in front of our hotel. But somehow, something went terribly awry.
Using my UA miles, I booked a code share flight on CA (economy) from PEK to HKG and back for the two of us. CA110 was scheduled to depart HKG today at 5:50 pm headed back to PEK. It's now 1:00 am and the flight is now scheduled to depart at 3:45 am. Every hour, they keep adding an hour to the departure time. There was a patch of t/s that came through BJ earlier today (actually, yesterday now). Other airline's flights made it out from HKG...but none of the afternoon/evening CA flights did...or made it IN here, for that matter. CA hasn't cancelled any of these flights, but instead is 'delaying' them by hour increments. If they cancelled, we could have at least gotten our bags back and found a room. They weren't even willing to pull bags so pax would have something to sleep in. So I sit...here...on the cold floor of the CA lounge (all of the seats were taken when most of the non-member pax stormed in and took them). I am wondering...is there a lesson here? Is there something, as a UA 1K I could have done differently, or better still, something someone else here might learn from either my mistake or ignorance of using my status to gain something? Please, enlighten me...before my Bailey's shot and and Ambien swirl together and (hopefully, quickly) whisk me away into sweet slumber. *sigh*

Sounds like a nightmare. Your only mistake was booking a flight on Air China (even though it's got a UA flt number)--I'm not sure I'd trust any of the Chinese airlines. Customer service is still an unknown concept to them. (And we complain about UA????!!!!!!???)

I'm not sure UA can do anything for you--you are on a UA ticket, but UA's going to claim that they're not responsible for what CA does, and to a large degree that's true, particularly if CA claims it's weather related. Your 1K (*A Gold) status probably doesn't mean much to CA. Your best bet at the moment is to ride it out. My guess is that there aren't many flights btwn HKG and PEK at your time of the morning--if it gets to be 6 or 7 AM and still no flight, try calling UA and see if they can put you on another airline--but my guess is right now you're stuck.

Good luck! Keep drinking the Bailey's.

Thanks for the advice. I did just as you suggested and rode it out. Lesson learned. Never again on CA. What a deplorable predicament.
I finally arrived into PEK at 6:00 am. Meh...only 9 hours late. YUCK!

9 hours late...

My worst foreign delay was 29 hours.

And others have had worse....

sorry, I'm confused about one thing - how did you book a codeshare with miles? If you on an award, codeshares aren't allowed; you're booked on the operating metal's flight #

Glad that you made it back, and sorry to hear about your troubles At any point, was a reroute offered on Dragonair?

Overall, the China-Hong Kong air routes are overcrowded and prone to delays. Frequency of flights would be my biggest predictor of reliability--as CA is actually NOT the largest operator and has only a few flights per day on this route, they are the most likely to leave you without options, whereas China Eastern, Cathay/Dragonair, each have something over 10 flights a day.
So, in summary, no, there's not much you could have done.