This week’s Compensation Clinic covers several service deficiencies at Cathay Pacific, as well as a complaint about the Regional “Business Class” Cathay offers on some routes.
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It’s no secret or surprise that none of us here at LoyaltyLobby are fans of the Cathay Pacific regional “Business Class” garbage that the airline tries to sell as a premium product, and it gets especially annoying when you’re caught up in it due to an aircraft change.
I recently redeemed an award on Cathay Pacific Asia Miles in Premium Economy (or so I thought) but due to a delay on the day of departure, I was forced to either take a 1:30+ delay or cancel my award and book whatever was available on an earlier flight (in Business, Premium Economy wasn’t available so Cathay couldn’t rebook me either).
One thing that I already hate is when airlines call their delays a flight retiming:
At least in the body of the notice, they called it a delay, but the title was “Flight Retiming” which is really putting lipstick on a pig – it’s a DELAY, so call it that.
I have a contact at the Bangkok CX station, but due to no Premium Economy being available on the earlier flight, I was unable to just move the flight over.
I was told to either take a downgrade and claim it later with Cathay for a refund (doubtful what the outcome would be) or cancel it and rebook the earlier flight myself. Chancing it and arriving late in HKG wasn’t an option for me, even an hour delay means I would most likely miss the club lounge Happy Hour at the Hyatt and I also had an appointment with a friend who was in the city.
I called Cathay to do this and was able to cancel the original ticket free of charge after talking to a manager since the first agent wanted to charge me for the cancellation and redeposit.
So I rebooked the entire itinerary in Business Class and specifically selected the HKG-ICN segment for the later flight because it had a proper Business seat (the earlier, better one only showed a regional configuration). Well, let’s say I should have just booked the better time in the first place.
Cathay eventually swapped the plane for that segment, and I ended up in the horrible “Regional Business” garbage, which is really just a Premium Economy seat. The personal space in this seat (2-2-2 cabin configuration) is totally ridiculous, and so is the seating position. I was NOT happy, and the crew promised to forward my complaint to customer care, who opened my file automatically.
The Bangkok to Hong Kong flight wasn’t much better. It was a good seat, but service was totally inadequate. It was freezing in the cabin, but for some reason there were no blankets at the seat, and the crew didn’t reply to the call button for a crazy 40 minutes until I went to the galley and asked for the Inflight Service Manager, who had stopped by earlier.
Why on earth is it so hard to get the crew’s attention for 40 minutes in Cathay Business Class? I asked them to bring me a blanket and leave me alone for the rest of the flight, without even bothering me with the meal.
Cathay Customer Care replied that they added 10,000 Asia Miles to my account, which posted within 48 hours, reducing the cost for the award from 27k to 17k miles.
Cathay Pacific’s ongoing problems are becoming a bit troublesome these days. I miss the time when Cathay was so good that there was almost never a reason to complain about in-flight service or operations.
Crew issues, delays, cancellations, the horrible regional cabins… just awful! Out of Bangkok, Cathay is one of the airlines that offer the highest frequency, though, and henceforth I have very little choice but to keep flying them.
Conclusion
Cathay Pacific ended up compensating me with 10,000 miles for an aircraft change that ended up bumping me into their regional “Business Class” and an in-flight service issue on BKK-HKG.
I wish their Standards would increase again to the point where the airline becomes more reliable, like they used to be in the past. Sadly, ever since the pandemic, Cathay Pacific is only a shadow of its former self.
While stations are typically flexible about rebooking you during IRROPS, they can only do so when seats are available. In this case, I was willing to cancel my original ticket and get a new one for 14k more miles issued to arrive in HKG around my original time. The fact that the “premium service” was really just average rubbish on both segments was a surprise.