I booked, thought about booking, travelled and prevaricated a lot in the last quarter of 2016 over various One World flights with BA, Cathay Pacific, JAL and Qantas. My experiences with lounges, cancellations, delays, customer service help lines and Visit Asia fares ranged from good to bad, from incomprehensible to unexpectedly good.
Cathay Pacific Lounge at Heathrow
This was really more of a sideshow, but did contain a nice little vignette of excellent customer service that catapulted Cathay to top of the opinion pile over the quarter. Their T3 lounge has recently been renovated, from November 2015 to December 2016 to be exact, thought the originally slated open date was July of last year, with problems rumoured to revolve around dated construction methods while expanding.
Irrespective of this, it was actually opened a day before our Qantas flight to Dubai in early December, and very pleasant it was too. Spilt into a a section resembling a refectory and a living room-style bar area it was relaxing, yet replete with a large noodle bar menu and interesting deli style snacks. Compared to the BA lounge at T3 it offered the possibility of a full meal before the flight, in a far mode sedate atmosphere.
The real bonus here was a DM tweet I sent them a few weeks ahead of soft launch asking if it would be ready. If was swiftly replied to with a ‘don’t know, try later’, though this was followed up with a ‘it’s now ready, swing by’ message two weeks later. It left a very favourable impression reminiscent of a long-term client-customer relationship than the swift, transactional nature of an airline business.
Qantas: Expensive solutions
Qantas’s flight to Sydney and Melbourne via Dubai offered an intriguing option for an actually good quality product on the way to the Rugby 7s tournament in the Middle Eastern Emirate. It’s probably ahead of BA and Virgin’s direct Premium Economy offerings from London and with two a380 flights a day, one with a lot of capacity. £250 was enough of a bid to secure a one way PE to Business upgrade on their cash-only bidding process.
Any sort of help desk function, however, was inefficient and frustrating. This was unfortunate with a problem on both the outbound and inbound flights. A system error in the Book Now Pay Later facility required not far short of £50-worth of phone calls waiting to be put through to someone with huge queues and inconsistent labelling of UK-based numbers on their website. Unlike Cathay, they replied to their tweets even slower and less helpfully. There was no credibly email facility.
Ithe One World Visit Asia Pass
The success of this product really comes down to how patient you are to get a discount. If offers good savings for reputable products, though isn’t available for online purchase and is barely available over the phone. The pass is explained in detail on the One World site, though in reality telephone agents usually don’t understand it and it’s fifty-fifty whether they can find out how to place a booking, even after elaboration, even after multiple transfers of call and call backs.
A source of mystery is how much the fixed-rate flights cost. There are six brackets with each allocated a price, which, presumably because of exchange rates, aren’t advertised. I eventually got two pairs of flights for the below prices, which worked out £100 cheaper than comparable online purchases. With a One World Sapphire card and the lounge, fast track and baggage allowances that come with it, I value that as a good saving, though it comes down to how much you value these things against 2-3 hours on the phone.
Cathay Pacific
Shanghai to Hong Kong
Hong Kong to Cebu
£251
JAL
Manila to Tokyo
Tokyo to Beijing
£274
I spoke to BA for the JAL flights which was just about achievable, though they couldn’t sort the Hong Kong hub flights. Cathay Pacific themselves sorted it out in under 15 mins, so It seems the lesson is use the call centre of the airline you’re buying off in your own country if they have one. In this Q4 unofficial One World experience-off, Cathay are clear winners.
miketaylstravels 