CX Avail PER-HKG - Dude where’s my flight

[ETW]

Does anybody know why CX is only selling seats on 3/10 of their scheduled flights from PER-HKG for pretty much the rest of the year ?

Only CX170 on T/F/S

 

[Captain Halliday]

Does anybody know why CX is only selling seats on 3/10 of their scheduled flights from PER-HKG for pretty much the rest of the year ?

Only CX170 on T/F/S

View attachment 315249

Don’t know for certain, but given the state of the industry globally, I suspect it a mix of:
- crew shortages
- needed to get the fleet out of storage
- low demand with both geopolitical as well as covid factors
- desire to recover some costs via low supply (and therefore higher fares) especially on routes where there’s little or no competition.

 

[ETW]

Don’t know for certain, but given the state of the industry globally, I suspect it a mix of:
- crew shortages
- needed to get the fleet out of storage
- low demand with both geopolitical as well as covid factors
- desire to recover some costs via low supply (and therefore higher fares) especially on routes where there’s little or no competition.

Which makes sense but what I don’t get is why have them on the schedule in the first place? Like why schedule a second daily flight 3 days a week if you won’t operate it?

 

[algae]

Below is 100% a guess based on very little experience of flight scheduling or Cathay:

I know 10 months ago or so when Cathay wasn't really flying, their schedules from ~April 2023 onwards was basically just 1 flight per day everywhere. Felt like a generic placeholder, but they were selling tickets and reward seats too.

Then ~3 months ago they seem to have gone in and 'updated' their schedules to be more realistic.
eg. Perth to HKG is 3 times a week on the Cathay Flight Timetable website. However i believe they haven't actually cancelled any of those 'generic placeholder' flights yet.



I say this because I have a Perth>HKG>Toronto reward flight in late April which i booked 7 months ago. My PER>HKG flight happens to line up with one of the 3 that actually is scheduled to fly.
However my HKG>Toronto is ticketed on a day they're not flying (as per the current schedule online). I'm stuck in limbo not knowing what they're actually going to do. Going into seat selection on my flight in J, we're the only two passengers it seems (which makes sense as the flight hasn't been available for purchase in months)

Just a suggestion.

 

[RealtimeY]

As mentioned above, these are basically placeholders that you wouldn't see anyway if you weren't using EF. They do sometimes open them up for booking (or zero them out as well) as their plans firm up so it is worth setting alerts for them if you're interested in booking them.


@algae You will get a cancellation notification eventually and most likely have to call them to re-book - it's better to have new dates you want in mind already. If your original flight does open back up at a later stage, they can put you back on it with some persistence on your end.

 

[algae]

@algae You will get a cancellation notification eventually and most likely have to call them to re-book - it's better to have new dates you want in mind already. If your original flight does open back up at a later stage, they can put you back on it with some persistence on your end.

That's what I'm expecting. Unless theyre nice and move me to a flight the day after.

My other hope is that they change their future schedule. They're currently flying at least once a day to Toronto. But in April that drops down. Seems odd that they'd reduce the frequency at a time most airlines are ramping up.

But it's also getting pretty close to April.

 

[algae]

Finally with 2 months and 8 days until my flight. They finally cancelled my flight, but fortunately moved both my flights to the next day.

Excellent outcome