[MartynSinclair]

BA were not the only airline cancelling flights this week. In the early hours of Monday morning (BKK time) I receive an email from CX confirming my flight from BKK to HKG was cancelled, meaning the additional sectors to LHR – AMS were also cancelled.

To be fair to CX, within a few hours I received a further email with my re scheduled flights for 48 hours later (Wednesday).

Simple question – I understand this will not be covered by EU 261. However, who picks up the expenses for 2 additional nights in BKK (hotel and food) – CX?

As a direct result of the CX cancellation, I needed to change the final and separately ticketed AMS-LHR final sector. BA charged me £100. I accept he AMS-LHR was on another ticket – BUT – it only needed changing due to the CX cancellation.

Reason for the flight cancellation was Cathay strike.

The other point, I recently read the route HKG-BKK is the second busiest scheduled route in the world next to Sydney – Melbourne. That being the case, why did it take CX 48 hours to find a spare seat. I checked with BA and space was available on Tuesday nights flights to London and AMS.

Total additional cost to me (hotel, food and 1 flight change) ca. £550-600, not an insignificant amount.. My travel insurance will not cover the full amount.

A big thank you to the 2 forum members who provided assistance to me.

Oh.. the 2 day delay, meant I missed my own birthday party in London as the revised departure date meant I was travelling entirely on my birthday, arrived back this morning, the day after…

Thanks for any help or guidance..

[AMcWhirter]

I wonder if CX will claim the situation was outside its control ?

[TominScotland]

Martyn, I don’t have an answer but will be interested in Cathay’s response as I am due to do quite a bit of flying with them over the next few months.

BTW, Bangkok – HKG is actually the world’s 34th busiest air route by number of passengers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_routes) with about a quarter of the number of the Seoul Gimpo – Jeju route which I flew in June – a flight every 8 minutes during the working day!!

[AMcWhirter]

Thanks for clarifying BKK-HKG, TominScotland

I also have my doubts re MEL-SYD as there is only one airport at each end of the route.

If one were to take some domestic routes in North America or UK/mainland Europe (where there can be air service from several airports in any given city) would the result(s) be the same ?

It’s the same with international service. London-Amsterdam and London-Dublin now come some way down the list because the OAG stats considers flights only from Heathrow.

But there are flights from many London airports to both Amsterdam and Dublin.

Judging by the smaller aircraft now used by KLM it would suggest that passenger numbers are down on what they used to be.

[MartynSinclair]

Not wishing to detract from the thread topic, but I am sure I read about the BKK-HKG route on BT somewhere. If I am mistaken, I apologise….

[SimonS1]

To answer the initial questions Martyn, I think you can break it into several parts.

1. Costs re the BKG-HKG delay – would (if anyone) be for Cathay. How easy that is really depends on whether there is any consumer regulation (similar to EC261) or whether you have to be willing to take legal action.

2. Costs re the AMS-LHR rebooking – are for you. These are the perils of ex-EU flights, really that was a choice you made. However it was a separate booking, certainly no responsibility of CX.

3. Flights on BKG-HKG – sounds odd to have to wait 48 hours, but not unusual that at certain periods flights get busy, and maybe with the protests capacity has been cut back? What did CX say when you asked them?

1 user thanked author for this post.

MartynSinclair

[christ]

I don’t think it was due to a Cathay strike but rather an unofficial national strike and I understand lots of Cathay employees did not turn up for work – I would have thought this would help your case.

1 user thanked author for this post.

MartynSinclair

[AnthonyDunn]

O/T, as an aside to this, I have just seen in the FT that the Chinese state is going ballistic with CX because some/many of the latter’s staff went on strike and a CX pilot was amongst those recently arrested for “rioting”. Apparently, the Chinese Govt is threatening to get nasty with Cathay which has Air China/CAAC is one of its two principal shareholders alongside the (London and HK-listed) Swire Group.

[LLBT]

I’ve only had positive experiences with CX, so I’ll be interested in how this pans out.
And no matter what happens, CX is still not Air Canada.
Last winter, due to “snow in Montreal,” Air Canada completely re-routed my NY-Melbourne trip, adding many hours to the original 21-hour itinerary, then adding an extra flight, finally moving me from business to economy on one leg, all with transfers that were not humanly possible while telling me to “think positively” (in the end, yes I missed one flight).
They didn’t include my frequent flyer miles on the new tickets, they didn’t help with vegetarian food on the 29-hour itinerary, they didn’t offer any kind of compensation and treated me on every leg like a slightly illegal add-on.
Then they offered me a $75 “discount on the next Air Canada ticket” which I will use never.

[maxgeorge]

I had a seven hour late departure on a CX flight – pilot booked off sick at LAX.

No compensation offered.

Two letters produced a US$ 200 certificate, good only for ticketing or in-flight purchases with CX.

My Asia bookings have since been with ANA or Asiana.

[cwoodward]

Hi Martyn
Sorry to read that you were caught up in our Hong Kong difficulties.
Being here in HK a have a little different take on the cause of your delays.

1.Certainly some Cathay ground staff joined the strike but I am told the number was not large.
While this was a contributing cause to the delay that you experienced it was not the major cause which was the large number airport employees, ground handling company employees baggage handlers etc who failed to turn up for work.
A further issue was students blocking MTR station platforms causing delays to people that wanted to work.

2. For much of the day the airport could operate only one of the two runways causing further delays to Cathays schedules.

3. Cathay behaves very decently in these delay situations and they may assist with some expenses. However I believe that much will depend on what the overall cost they would incur in doing so and I fear that the cost worldwide would be just too high particularly as Cathay can very legitimately claim that the delays was beyond their control. As of course they largely were.
Unfortunately I suspect that you are not going to see much in the way of compensation from anyone although as a frequent Cathay flyer they may make some sort of
gesture.
The HK – Bangkok route is a very busy one but not in the worlds top 20 where 6 of these routes are ex HK. The busiest international route ex HK is to Taipei and it is the second busiest in the world

1 user thanked author for this post.

MartynSinclair

[MartynSinclair]

What concerns me, frequent flyer or not – is an airline can move a flight by 2 nights, due to an ‘operational requirement’ and the extra costs involved to the passenger may not be recovered either from the airline or the travel insurance company. The actual reason behind the ‘operational requirement’ is largely irrelevant and there is no explanation why the delay was for 2 nights..

Flip side, a call to BA, I have an ‘operational requirement’ to change a flight I can not make, due to cancellations, ‘no problem sir, that’s £100…

Let’s see if CX reply….

[SimonS1]

[quote quote=952846]What concerns me, frequent flyer or not – is an airline can move a flight by 2 nights, due to an ‘operational requirement’ and the extra costs involved to the passenger may not be recovered either from the airline or the travel insurance company. The actual reason behind the ‘operational requirement’ is largely irrelevant and there is no explanation why the delay was for 2 nights..

Flip side, a call to BA, I have an ‘operational requirement’ to change a flight I can not make, due to cancellations, ‘no problem sir, that’s £100…

Let’s see if CX reply….[/quote]

True Martyn, however as an experienced traveller you know the devil is always in the detail. Also frustratingly these irritating things tend to snowball as the did here.

The Cathay strike – was it really a Cathay strike? It was reported in the media as mass demonstrations that reduced capacity at the airport, shut down the airport express, saw cancellations on different airlines. So Cathay could legitimately say it was outside their control (I am sure BA would try to weasel out of cash compensation in similar circumstances), and in any case legislation in different places (including the US) is not always customer friendly. Hence need to fall back on insurance.

The re-booking 48 hours later – very annoying, but why was this -did you ask Cathay? I suppose it could be chicken and egg here – 150 flights were cancelled Monday so a major backlog of people to get shifted.

BA was a different matter, as rehearsed above it was a separate booking. OK it cost £100 to change, on the other hand what were the savings by using an ex-EU structure with BA?

All in all very tedious though, you only realise how frustrating these sagas are when you get caught up in them.

[BrotherJim]

Sydney/Melbourne has always been very busy and high up in that list.

Also for the record Melbourne has two airports. The second is at Avalon and has quite a number of Jetstar flights to Sydney. When ever I’ve seen the Sydney Melbourne figures it has always included Avalon. Though should be noted on the list linked above some routes are split into airport pairs rather than city pairs.

As for BKK-HKG I’ve never seen it listed as high as number 2 ever even for international only routes. In fact I am surprised it is 5th for international only routes.

And to the OP I would have thought the costs for delays would be why you would have travel insurance. Except for Europe only ever really heard of airlines covering expenses for hotels for delays after one has checked in. But if flight delayed and you cannot check in it is your problem which gets back to the issue of travel insurance. The same for other expanses such as your seperate ticked flight at the end.

1 user thanked author for this post.

MartynSinclair

[MartynSinclair]

[quote quote=952883]I would have thought the costs for delays would be why you would have travel insurance.[/quote]

[quote quote=952883]But if flight delayed and you cannot check in it is your problem which gets back to the issue of travel insurance[/quote]

@BrotherJim – which was exactly my initial thought. My first call to my insurers was responded with a ‘not our problem, speak to the airline’ – the follow up call confirmed if the airline didn’t cover the cost, I would be covered for around 40% of the loss.

This is the second time in 2 years I have had 2 different travel cancellations claims, I thought would be covered in full, which appear not to be… My travel insurers are Amex Plat…

[Author]

Posts