Royal Jordanian cancelled flight

[Alexthenotsogreat]

Hi, I’d appreciate some advice anyone has on how to proceed following a flight change.

At the end of a trip to Malaysia next year I am flying a circuitous route back to Paris CDG from Kuala Lumpur, via Bangkok and Amman. The KUL – BKK leg is on Malaysia Airlines and the BKK – AMM – CDG legs are on Royal Jordanian. The reason I booked this route was a) it’ll give me enough tier points for BA Silver and b) as a chance to go RJ business class (I know it’s probably not great but I enjoy trying out different airlines…)

RJ have emailed about a schedule change, moving the BKK – AMM leg a day early. They haven’t moved the KUL-BKK leg (yet) so the current plan has me flying out of BKK a day before I arrive there… I assume this will be corrected.

I’ve checked and there is no longer a BKK-AMM flight on RJ on my originally booked day. There is a flight 24 hours earlier (which is what I’ve been moved to) and 24 hours later.

Before I call RJ customer service, I was hoping for some advice:

1.Given there is no RJ flight on my booked date, is my only option likely to be to lose a day of my holiday or add a day? My understanding is that my flghts are not covered by EU 261 and therefore I won’t be able to insist on rerouting on the same day.
2.In the unlikely event I do end up on another route, can I claim original routing credit from BA to get the tier points I would have earned if I’d flown my booked journey.
3. For any other costs incurred – an extra hotel night in Paris for example if I arrive a day early – will I have to rely on travel insurance? (I’ve got Amex Plat insurance)

Thanks very much!

[Gagravarr]

From what people on FlyerTalk have said, you won’t be able to get a re-routing that avoids AMM. You could see if they’ll rebook you with Qatar on KUL – DOH – AMM, to connect onto your remaining AMM – CDG flight. That would even get you 20 more tier points than what you’d booked 🙂

RJ aren’t as bad as Sri Lankan for cancellations and schedule changes, but they’re not perfect.

BTW we did the same CDG – AMM – BKK – KUL a few weeks back, and enjoyed it!

[Alexthenotsogreat]

Thanks very much – that’s helpful advice!

And glad to hear you enjoyed it – we are looking forward to it!

[Alexthenotsogreat]

As an update to this – after a bit of polite back-and-forth I managed to get them to agree to a rerouting on Qatar, direct to Paris via Doha (ie no Amman connection). Very pleased as the DOH – CDG leg is Qsuite which I’ve not yet flown. And I’ll still get to try RJ on the outbound.

[Gagravarr]

Probably should have seen this coming – both my upcoming RJ flights have now been affected too!

RJ have seemingly changed the AMM-BKK route from 3x weekly to 2x weekly, at least for next spring/summer.

For a CDG-AMM-BKK-KUL flight booked directly with RJ, I emailed the London office (email address on their website under contact us!), and asked if they’d mind moving me to fly out a bit earlier and back a bit later. Supplied preferred dates and flight numbers. Got an email back a few hours later with a proposed itinerary to confirm, and then an e-ticket a few hours after I OK’d it. Actually better flights for me, which’d been way more expensive when I booked, so all good!

My MAD-AMM-BKK-HND (Tokyo) was booked with American Express Travel, online rather than phone, in part because the RJ website doesn’t let you book to Tokyo and I found availability for the right dates late one evening… Rang Amex on the phone number in the “Notification of Changes” email, which put me through to the wrong team(!), then transferred to the online team who’ve been pretty useless. They suggested I might want to cancel and rebook with someone else! After some pushing, they went off to ask RJ about options, and came back to say that no re-routing was possible. Since this is an EU origin flight, it’s covered by EU261, so I think it might just be Amex being useless. I’ve told them to go try again, we’ll see what they come back with tomorrow….