[Anonymous]

[thanyakorn]

I am the passenger on board flight CA 959 from Beijing to Bangkok on Jan 4, 2010 and the fare paid was a normal Business Class.

With the incident of the snow storm in Beijing on Jan 3, 2009 and it resulted in airport closure as well as flight delayed and cancellation. I totally understand that there’re large numbers of leftover passengers which airlines need to put them on the next available flight. Hence, the Business Class cabin was full of upgraded passengers. As mentioned, I totally understand situation and I don’t mind upgraded passengers at all even I was paid the normal Business Class Fare.

I am a Star Alliance Gold Card member and I’ve sometimes got the complimentary upgrade to Business Class / First Class when travelled on Economy / Business Class on some overbooked flight. However, what really bother me and make me feel totally unacceptable is the inappropriate behavior during the flight of some upgraded passengers from “Tour Group from Thailand”. The behavior includes noise making and shouting to the other passenger expressed the angriness why they plane has to be stand still on the run way for more than 3 hours due to heavy traffic. These people are not respect the paid Business Class passenger at all.

I’ve paid the Business Class fare because of extra comfort and quiet cabin (as you know that the Business Class fare is almost triple from Economy Class). With this flight, the cabin was very noisy and I was not able to sleep until the flight attendance turned off the light. It seems like somehow, I was in the Economy Class with the extra space.

Air China will need to re-consider that upgrade criteria again, not just randomly upgrade passenger especially those on a “tour group” and make those people disturb the passenger who paid the normal fare. Otherwise, I will need to consider using Air China’s service again.

[StefanJohannsen]

While I understand that it is not nice having this disturbance, my questions are:

– if the disturbung passenger had paid full business class fare, would that have made a difference..?

– What if he had paid full fare and you were upgraded, would that make any difference..?

– What if he had a higher status than you (LH HON, SAS Pandion, SQ Soliaire, etc), would that have made things better…?

So basically it is not a question of an UPGRADED passenger behaving like an idiot, but simply SOME passenger doing so.

I do not know how ground staff should figure out how a passenger might behave on board and therefore possibly exclude him/her from an upgrade or choose somebody else, so there is not much that can be done there, either……

[thanyakorn]

I agreed with yout that it is the problem with specific passenger being an “Idiot”. However, by screening passenger before givem them the complimentary upgrade can prevent this kind of situation to happen. As far as I know, the check-in agent usually screen those passenger by the way they dress etc. However, Air China just upgraded almost the whole tour group. I don’t think a decent airlines would do that.

[TravelFan]

In response to StefanJohannsen: Whilst this is to some extent a valid point I think it is an over-simplification. A full fare paying business class passenger has a (legitimate) expectation that the cabin environment will be more peaceful and pleasant than an economy class cabin. Whilst good behaviour should be expected from all passengers it will be particularly irritating for a paying business class passenger when a large number of economy passengers are upgraded and in addition do not behave well. Already seeing multiple unpaid upgrades can be difficult to swallow for the paying customer, and it is inevitable (and understandable) that bad behaviour from the upgraded passengers is especially annoying.

[BuddyCasino]

I do agree that this is really something that can be annoying, especially if you had to pay a huge amount of money for the C-Class ticket.

However I do not think that this is upgrade-specific but rather a general annoyance if people behave like idiots in the premium cabin………….

And in regards to screening these passengers (f.x. by dress code): My experiance tells me that often the ones wearing a suit can be the biggest idiots on board (especially with the DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM attitude..)

😉

[tarisingh]

with some airlines it does seem to be a lottery with business class – on a flight from Mumbai i was allocated a seat that was faulty, when I told the purser he simply said “yes this seat was reported faulty several days ago and the check in agents were aware of this (he showed me the paper work) and as a legitimate business class passenger I shouldn’t have been allocated this seat – but – he said it’s not a problem as most of the other passengers in the cabin are upgrades I can choose who I would like to swap with me!! of course I couldn’t possibly (my problem I know) MAKE someone else sit in that seat as all of them had heard the conversation. Wrote several time to Alitalia but in the end it was a “sorry for your experience but F**@%% off!

[q.travel]

my suggestion: u skip the air china. Not only the asian route of ca is horrible, but also intercon. they have no attitude, both passengers and airline staff. i strongly recommend that u fly on ur route with thai airways. or u can take dragonair to hkg with a comfortable stopover. both r far better than air china.

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