Cathay Pacific First Class Ticket Fraudulently Canceled: Recourse?

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.

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?