OMAAT reader Alan shared a frustrating situation he recently faced for an award ticket he booked for his mom, and asked for my take. Let me share my thoughts, as this is an unusual one.
In this post:
Cathay Pacific first class ticket unknowingly canceled
Alan redeemed miles for his mom to fly Cathay Pacific first class, a ticket booked through Cathay Pacific’s own loyalty program. Everything was fine, until she showed up at the check-in counter, where the check-in agents claimed she had no reservation.
Long story short, someone had canceled her ticket just days before departure, through a WeChat call to Cathay Pacific’s customer service line. Upon investigating, the check-in agent claimed that the person who canceled the ticket claimed to be the traveler’s husband, but Alan says with 100% certainty that no one in his family canceled the ticket.
In the end, she had to book a last minute ticket at the airport, which ended up costing roughly $1,300 in economy. Obviously the experience was far from what she was expecting. When looking at the Cathay Pacific account, it showed a refund of the miles, minus the deduction for the cancelation fees.
Alan says that Cathay Pacific refuses to accept responsibility, claiming that they need to file a police report with Hong Kong authorities. So they’ve done that, but they worry that this will go nowhere. As Alan concludes:
I think this is unreasonable since they have the logs of who contacted them and presumably have a voice recording of the person who did it too. We had nothing to do with them, don’t even know their WeChat username, what they said, their voice, or even if they are male or female. I think the duty falls on Cathay’s end to figure out what happened since we have no relation with or information about the person who made the cancellation request. Cathay eventually restored the cancellation fee paid in miles but I believe the loss is much, much greater including the loss of the first class flight and the cost of the last minute substitute economy booking.
Alan of course wonders why someone would even cancel the flight, and speculates that maybe they wanted to open up the award flight for another booking.
My take on this unexpected flight cancelation
What a crappy situation. Imagine showing up at the airport, expecting you’re going to be relaxing for 17 hours in Cathay Pacific first class, only to end up paying $1,300 for an economy ticket. I guess there are two separate sets of thoughts I have — how can this be prevented in the future, and what should Cathay Pacific’s liability be?
On the first point, obviously this situation is in no way the fault of Alan or his mother. That being said, there’s an important lesson here — always keep a close eye on your flight reservations, especially in the days leading up to departure. Even if you don’t intend to check-in online, at least check the reservation the day of departure to make sure everything looks okay.
Admittedly I’m probably more cognizant of this than others, since I’ve had people maliciously cancel my travel plans multiple times over the years. So I do everything to maintain account security, constantly keep an eye on my accounts and travel plans, etc.
Even if you’re not being maliciously targeted by others, the reality is that loyalty program fraud is running rampant, given the huge network of people selling miles, tickets, etc.
While many airlines and loyalty programs have improved their methods of verification, it’s still not consistently the case. With lots of airlines, it’s easy to figure out a passenger’s confirmation number, claim to be their spouse, make a change, etc.
I think the industry as a whole needs to continue to reform and improve account security, because it shouldn’t be that you can cancel a booking without providing some sort of code, password, or other two factor authentication method.
Now, what’s Cathay Pacific’s liability here? That’s beyond my area of legal expertise. However, you’d hope that the airline would be willing to at least investigate where the call that canceled the ticket came from, who else ended up being booked in the cabin after the cancelation, etc. Furthermore, you’d hope the airline would investigate who had accessed the record locator, to see if there are maybe any internal bad actors.
Then again, understandably those details will probably not be shared with the victim, for obvious reasons.
In an ideal world, the traveler would of course be made whole here, since she lost a significant amount of money, and had a much worse experience. I’m not sure what being made whole would look like here, exactly, since it’s not clear that Cathay Pacific’s policies weren’t followed (if someone lies and claims to be the husband and has all the ticket information, what can be done?). Should she be refunded for the economy ticket and then charged the economy mileage, or…?
That’s my take. By drawing attention to this, I hope Cathay Pacific will at least make a good faith effort to investigate what happened here, and change its policies to prevent a similar situation in the future. More than anything, it’s an important reminder to always keep an eye on your reservations.
Bottom line
A Cathay Pacific first class passenger arrived at the airport to an unpleasant surprise, being informed that her ticket had been canceled. As it turned out, someone claiming to be her husband canceled the ticket in the days prior to departure. As a result, she ended up buying a cash economy ticket at the airport, a far cry from the experience she was expecting.
If nothing else, this is an important reminder to always keep an eye on your reservations. There are some bad actors out there. It’s also important that airlines keep working to improve the security of reservations, because some airlines just make it too easy to cancel travel plans.
What do you make of this situation?
The legal perspective here isn’t too difficult…
If the passenger can prove that Cathy’s has been negligent (to be clear, if they cancelled the flight just because someone claimed to be a spouse, without further proof,that’s negligence) she can sue them for quite a significant a,out of damages. I’d advise a multiple of the price difference between economy and first.
If the airline followed a process and the process was reasonable (so they...
The legal perspective here isn’t too difficult…
If the passenger can prove that Cathy’s has been negligent (to be clear, if they cancelled the flight just because someone claimed to be a spouse, without further proof,that’s negligence) she can sue them for quite a significant a,out of damages. I’d advise a multiple of the price difference between economy and first.
If the airline followed a process and the process was reasonable (so they were not negligent in structuring or following the process) the best the passenger can expect is a token gesture of good will.
That's really unfortunate. it possibly took away a once-in-a-lifetime experience for his mother.
Airlines should check at least a few basic things before making major changes like cancellations- either the person should be logged in (so whatever levels of online authentication happen) or should be required to provide some info beyond what would be in a reservation email if they're doing the weird thing of calling.
With Hilton for example, even doing something like...
That's really unfortunate. it possibly took away a once-in-a-lifetime experience for his mother.
Airlines should check at least a few basic things before making major changes like cancellations- either the person should be logged in (so whatever levels of online authentication happen) or should be required to provide some info beyond what would be in a reservation email if they're doing the weird thing of calling.
With Hilton for example, even doing something like making a points reservation on the phone has them verify various info AND then they send you a email or SMS verification code you need to read back to them. That's a great level of non-cumbersome but effective due diligence.
(on top of that, Hilton would send an email afterwards with the reservation info and a separate email mentioning points consumed)
Cathay should be at least as diligent as a hotel company; it's easier to get a different hotel room than it usually is to figure out alternate flight arrangements.
It seems to me that the simplest explanation (dave's Occam's Razor) is that this was initiated by an airline employee to provide for a seat for a VIP in First. If this actually happened as presented to Ben, and if the original seat was filled by someone else - there was no mysterious husband cancelling the flight, no figuring out her ticket or confirmation number, and no jealous family member doing something malicious - just...
It seems to me that the simplest explanation (dave's Occam's Razor) is that this was initiated by an airline employee to provide for a seat for a VIP in First. If this actually happened as presented to Ben, and if the original seat was filled by someone else - there was no mysterious husband cancelling the flight, no figuring out her ticket or confirmation number, and no jealous family member doing something malicious - just an airline changing a seat to a revenue seat for an important customer with lots of miles, and they probably put a note in the record locator to say that the husband called and cancelled it. The airline knows what happened - end of story.
Occam's razor. A jealous family member did it.
Is it possible the person who called to cancel had a seat on that flight but the airline cancelled the wrong seat? Potentially similar name etc? The story doesn't really make sense otherwise.
Was the flight completely sold out in F before the cancellation? If not that also doesn't make sense.
I just don’t get motive here. Apart from being malicious so likely someone from the persons inner circle.
The person cancelling it didn’t do so to get hold of the miles which would be the usual scenario.
And the theory of cancelling an award booking to open up another award booking for someone else doesn’t really hold any weight either. A few days ahead of departure a cancelled award booking would unlikely result...
I just don’t get motive here. Apart from being malicious so likely someone from the persons inner circle.
The person cancelling it didn’t do so to get hold of the miles which would be the usual scenario.
And the theory of cancelling an award booking to open up another award booking for someone else doesn’t really hold any weight either. A few days ahead of departure a cancelled award booking would unlikely result in the airline re-instating it for someone else to book with miles.
I had a bit of a weird situation today when I arrived at an airport to check my bag and discovered someone else managed to check their bag in my name (no idea how that happened, my name is not too common and the final destination of my ticket was also kinda obscure). My first thought was that someone now has a bag tag with my name and PNR and they can do whatever they...
I had a bit of a weird situation today when I arrived at an airport to check my bag and discovered someone else managed to check their bag in my name (no idea how that happened, my name is not too common and the final destination of my ticket was also kinda obscure). My first thought was that someone now has a bag tag with my name and PNR and they can do whatever they want to my ticket just for the kicks of it. Sometimes you don't really need a reason, just an opportunity.
I had a pair of CX F tickets for my honeymoon canceled by CX due to suspected fraud (even though the account name matched one of the tickets and both of us were ticketed with the same last name) with no notice from CX. There was no email or WhatsApp notification and the miles were not returned to my account. I only caught it because I checked the reservations periodically and all of a sudden...
I had a pair of CX F tickets for my honeymoon canceled by CX due to suspected fraud (even though the account name matched one of the tickets and both of us were ticketed with the same last name) with no notice from CX. There was no email or WhatsApp notification and the miles were not returned to my account. I only caught it because I checked the reservations periodically and all of a sudden the CX PNR wouldn’t pull up anything. Luckily I caught it a few months before the trip so through many messages and emails to CX as well as sending in copies of our passports I was able to get the tickets reinstated, but the process took about a month and in the meantime we lost our seat assignments of 1A and 2A which was a bit disappointing.
CX could definitely do a better job alerting travelers when there are modifications to reservations. We’d have had no issues submitting passport photos when they were concerned about fraud in the first place.
This made me feel better about gardening my reservations when booked in advance even though my spouse thought I was a bit mad checking flights we already booked over and over.
People share too much info online. Copies of boarding passes with names, PNRs and bar codes. Never do that as scammers can use that info. Recently I saw a blogger post her itinerary online for a future trip on Singapore airlines. I could have easily called to cancel it.
I always treat the PRN as the password… someone would have had to get a hold of that, or maybe at the very least someone who knew the exact name of the person flying on the exact flight and maybe sweet talked their way through on the phone without the record locator… either way seems pretty strange unless someone internally pulled that info for the reason suggested
I wish Arps would stop playing tricks on people and their award tickets.
That’s why I like Korean airlines requiring a pin to modify your reservations. I think this pin system should be implemented by all airlines.
Qatar too. However that’s online. Not phone
@Icarus - Over the phone, Qatar Airways requires you to answer a ton of questions about the passenger and the booking, some of which I cannot even remember being the passenger (like what card you used to book it, the date and time the ticket was purchased - and they don't clarify if they mean the time I booked or when it was ticketed, and if they mean local time of where I purchased, the...
@Icarus - Over the phone, Qatar Airways requires you to answer a ton of questions about the passenger and the booking, some of which I cannot even remember being the passenger (like what card you used to book it, the date and time the ticket was purchased - and they don't clarify if they mean the time I booked or when it was ticketed, and if they mean local time of where I purchased, the local time of the city the itinerary originates in, or Doha time). If you answer anything incorrectly, they will hang up on you and you have to call back and wait in the queue again. Its definetly secure, but a bit of a PITA for me.
Another reason why I like EU261!
If departing the EU CX would be on the hook for 600€ denied boarding compensation and a transportation in first class on the next available seat (on any airline).
@ Bjarne -- I love EU261, but I wouldn't assume that would apply here. After all, there wasn't a valid ticket (through no fault of the traveler).
EU data protection would generally need 2-3 additional pieces of identifying information such as registered email address and home address and last four digits of your card used to pay fees and taxes - or SMS confirmation code sent to a registered phone number. If they’d failed to do that there could be an argument for it then being IDB as cancellation process wouldn’t have followed other legal requirements. There’s no way I could call...
EU data protection would generally need 2-3 additional pieces of identifying information such as registered email address and home address and last four digits of your card used to pay fees and taxes - or SMS confirmation code sent to a registered phone number. If they’d failed to do that there could be an argument for it then being IDB as cancellation process wouldn’t have followed other legal requirements. There’s no way I could call up and modify my wife’s booking unless I am on it without her pre-authorising me to make that change. If, however, someone had all that info then no grounds for IDB I can see.
CX have to follow GDPR as they operate in Europe.
My feeling is that it’s someone who had access to the details and it could be malicious. CX on the other hand would not know as they did it in good faith if someone calls with all the relevant details.
Unless the actual passenger cancelled the ticket, there was a valid ticket as far as the law is concerned. Airline being negligent in their security procedures doesn't really affect its obligations.
No. 1 reason not to share your booking confirmation or stupidly photograph your boarding pass
No evidence the reader did either of those two things
And what if he had “kept an eye” on the reservation? What good would that do? When all this was discovered at airport check~in, it sounds like CX took the position the reservation had been validly cancelled and they weren’t going to do anything to rectify the situation. Why do you think the outcome would be different if this had been discovered a day or two earlier?
@ David -- If you catch it in advance, it's much more likely you can come to a resolution with the airline. For example, I've had my travel plans canceled in the past, and the airline worked with me to restore my reservation, etc. They'd also have more time to investigate what happened, figure out who might be behind it, etc.
For that matter, even if the airline couldn't help, the traveler would've had more time to find an alternative award option.
you said in the article "I’ve had people maliciously cancel my travel plans multiple times over the years." - please elaborate who/what/why? This makes no sense to me -
Barb - Ben shares his upcoming travel plans on the blog. Maybe it's jealousy, envy, maliciousness, or some combination of the three.
Ben, you are saying "With lots of airlines, it’s easy to figure out a passenger’s confirmation number" - but, sorry, how? Unless you post a picture of you boarding pass on FB "look I am going places"?
@ polarbear -- Let's say you know someone is traveling in a particular market on a certain day. You can call up the airline and say "hey, my name is X and I'm booked on flight X, but I can't figure out my confirmation number." If you have some very basic details, they can give you that information, and then you can more easily manage the reservation. Of course the exact policy differs by airline, but it's an issue.
ok, true, but it still requires quite a bit of knowledge of details. Meaning far from trivial if, as suggested, someone may have tried to open up award on particular day. Carefully suggesting that inside (family) job or oversharing on social media is a likelier scenario than others
@ polarbear -- For sure you need some level of information. In this case, it's possible that someone on the inside is working with brokers to provide this information.
You realize he's saying "inside" job as in the pax's family whereas you're saying someone within CX.
I tried with EK. No luck.
They would not give me my record locator after AZ (missed connection) rebooked on FCO-DXB-BKK.
But I was fine at check-in.
There had to be some behavior by the passenger or someone in her circle / access to information to lead to a scenario where an unrelated person contacts the airline and is able to cancel the reservation.
The minimum information would be 1) pax name, 2) date and 3) route. Maybe the passenger and her son should look closely at what happened internally. This doesn't justify a malicious act of a third party canceling...
There had to be some behavior by the passenger or someone in her circle / access to information to lead to a scenario where an unrelated person contacts the airline and is able to cancel the reservation.
The minimum information would be 1) pax name, 2) date and 3) route. Maybe the passenger and her son should look closely at what happened internally. This doesn't justify a malicious act of a third party canceling the reservation but that's perhaps the only lesson here -- which you didn't really write about -- don't share any details about your travel plans!
So, basically you have no useful advice to offer Alan but just wanted to create a clickbait post out of it?
Settle down now, Jesus Christ. With the hair trigger temper like yours you’ll never amount to any degree of success in any profession.
You’re also a total dumbass because the useful advice is to “garden” your reservations (as the clickbaiter in chief Gary Leff likes to say). Even if you aren’t going to check in online, check your trip to make sure it’s there.
Airlines often make schedule changes and whatnot and you can spot those by gardening as well.
Piss off, AK
@ AK -- Interesting way to interpret my post. First of all, I shared an important reminder to keep an eye on itineraries, to avoid this happening to others. Second of all, often me publishing these stories does lead to a resolution. For example, remember that recent story about when Emirates banned a first class passenger?
https://onemileatatime.com/news/emirates-bans-first-class-passenger-credit-card-dispute/
After the post, that issue was resolved, and he was even offered some compensation. That happens more...
@ AK -- Interesting way to interpret my post. First of all, I shared an important reminder to keep an eye on itineraries, to avoid this happening to others. Second of all, often me publishing these stories does lead to a resolution. For example, remember that recent story about when Emirates banned a first class passenger?
https://onemileatatime.com/news/emirates-bans-first-class-passenger-credit-card-dispute/
After the post, that issue was resolved, and he was even offered some compensation. That happens more often than not.
It would be nice to have that post (or any other similar case) updated with how it ended up being resolved.
VERY useful advice here is do yourself a favour and check your itin frequently
As a travel blog, this is a useful warning for people.
Does Cathay send an email when a ticket is canceled?
@ Arps -- There was no email, and when he asked about it, he was told that emails aren't sent out for cancelations made in that way.
Many US companies, both transportation and credit cards, send emails for EVERYTHING that transpires on your account. Sometimes I roll my eyes at getting off the phone and finding an automatically generated email reminding me of what I did thirty seconds ago -- this story is a good reminder that these things have been implemented for valid reasons.
I usually get a request to fill out a survey multiple times a day.
I find this to be a dubious claim from him. I've cancelled a few Cathay bookings (booked directly with Cathay, not via a partner) and always received a cancellation email. I feel like there is more to this story he is omitting, or just simply lying about.