Hainan Airlines Flight HU786: Cancelled from Auckland & Our Fight for Compensation

Hainan Airlines cancelled our flight due an engineering fault, knowing my rights, I rebooked on another airline the next day, and asked Hainan Airlines to reimburse me. They refused, so I took the airline to the New Zealand Disputes Tribunal under the Montreal Convention, and four weeks before the hearing, they settled in full. This is the story of knowing your rights, and standing up for them, especially with airlines.

Backstory - Boxing Day Chaos

Cancellations happen, that's the nature of the airline industry. If it happens due to weather, or something outside the airline's control, there's not a lot you can do but wait, which is fair enough. However, if the airline cancels your flight for a reason within their control, you have rights. In this case, the aircraft had an engineering issue and couldn't fly that day. All of us were stuck at the gate, and were asked to return back to the check-in counters for hotels and re-booking the next day. In this case, the airline being at an outstation like Auckland, suggested they'd fly the same aircraft in the same seats the very next day. I will admit the Menzies crew were apologetic but didn't have a lot they could offer. Their best bet was to get us to the hotel, and get us back on the flight the next day. The airline was not present at the airport, and we were left to deal with Menzies, who were doing their best to manage a very large crowd of passengers. We got the taxi home and decided to come back the next day for the flight - I mean, if they're confident it'll be ready, why not right?

The don't call us airline

Having spent more than half a decade in travel, my gut told me this was going to end badly, so I stayed up the night trying to contact Hainan Airlines.

The Hainan New Zealand phone number is actually a Chinese number that can't be dialled from here. Their Australian number only operates during business hours. Live chat put me in a queue for four hours, then connected me to an agent who said I'd already flown the flight and disconnected. WeChat kept dropping out. Desperate, we tried the rebooking link in another passenger's email was in Chinese and led to a portal where nothing worked. Manage My Booking wouldn't let me in. I tried the WeChat Mini app — also nothing, because the flight showed as cancelled in their system.

By morning, we hadn't spoken to anyone at the airline and were no closer to getting to Shanghai. We just had no sleep to show for it.

I don't think I've ever had a situation where any business was that uncontactable. It takes a bit of effort I'd say!

The ghost flight

After all the commotion and reassurance to show up the next morning, we got to the airport at 7:30am for the 9:30 flight. There was no Hainan Airlines counter. No staff, no signage, nothing on the boards. It was as if they'd packed up overnight and left. Airport staff had no idea. Live chat, again, went nowhere.

An airport employee pointed us toward the China Eastern counter — I suspect he just assumed the Chinese carriers shared staff, which they don't — but it turned out China Eastern had a morning flight to Shanghai. The duty manager there had an exasperated look having explained to several other stranded Hainan passengers that just because she worked for a Chinese airline, doesn't mean she can handle all Chinese airlines. Luckily for us, we were heading to Shanghai, and she was flying to Shanghai.

We stood there and made a decision. We could keep waiting for an airline that had given us no reason to believe they'd show up, or we could buy tickets on this flight and get to Shanghai close to our original schedule. Since the days of being able to buy an actual ticket at the airport are long gone, Trip.com let us book and be ticketed on the flight while check-in was about to close. Amazing! We bought the tickets. China Eastern was excellent. We never heard from Hainan that morning.

What came next

Halfway to Shanghai, I start hassling Hainan Airlines, and finally get a one liner saying to contact their disrupt team via email. I am livid, and explain I want to be reimbursed for my China Eastern tickets, my PE upgrade, and the taxis. Silence... once in Shanghai, we carry on a bit of back and forth. Hainan Airlines trying to explain to us that our return tickets are void because we didn't take the inward flight, us explaining the reason we didn't is because they cancelled them! When we showed up for our return flight at Shanghai Pudong Airport, we were shunted between check-in and ticketing for a solid twenty minutes before my very terrible Mandarin convinced them I was too much of a pain to deal with, and they put us on the flight to Auckland, to save themselves the torture of listening to me. This was unremarkable of-course, though flying Hainan Airlines economy, it's a very comfortable trip.

The $200 "final offer"

Back in Auckland, I email Hainan demanding compensation. Initially they explain that the flight did take off - at 6:30pm that evening, and because of that, we just missed the flight, and weren't eligible for anything. Wait a minute - how can we miss a flight we weren't told about? Silence. On follow up, we also hear nothing back. Eventually I start threatening the Disputes Tribunal, and ask, what is their final offer? They come back - 800RMB per person, so $200 NZD, for each of us, as compensation for the disruption caused. Final offer they say. They also explain the PE upgrade and taxi fares are in review. Not satisfied, I raised a chargeback on my credit card which my bank (ASB), promptly approved. Hainan, as soon as hearing I had filed a chargeback, attempted to refund me the taxi and PE upgrade, caveat being signing a Power of Attorney document stating we agree to that being the compensation! WTF? Pro tip: Put everything on your credit card, the bank sorted me out in about 2 business days and money in my account for the upgrade at least. This left just the taxis and the flights to deal with.

Our friend the Montreal Convention

Given the "final offer", I proceeded to file a claim with the Disputes Tribunal. Now here's an interesting law case. Under New Zealand law, the consumer guarantees act (CGA) covers all goods and services provided within New Zealand. International airlines aren't actually covered within this at all! So quoting the CGA doesn't get you very far. However, luckily for us consumers, in the early 2000s, the Clark Government ratified the Montreal Convention 1999 (MC99) in full within the Civil Aviation Act 2003, meaning what applied in the Montreal Convention, applies in NZ law. The good news with this is the MC99 has two specific sections that work in our favour. The first is an airline can be held to jurisdiction in either its home country, or in a destination country, meaning the places it flies to. This meant we had a claim in Auckland, rather than where the ticket was issued being Singapore (even if we purchased in NZD on the Hainan Airlines website). The second element of the MC99 that's important is Article 19, that lays out the compensation when a flight is delayed or cancelled. Again, because New Zealand had enshrined the full MC99 in our laws, the Montreal Convention applied! The bad news is, there are only three previous cases between people v Airlines, and all were nuanced. There wasn't a single open and shut case where an airline had cancelled a flight, a passenger chose to book their own flight, and proceeded to win in court to get the airline to reimburse them. The most likely reason is MC99 has a "mitigation of loss" clause, which means the airline does everything possible to mitigate losses - i.e. booking you on another flight, another airline, etc. The passenger must show they did the same (but up to the airline to prove they didn't). So, from a legal perspective, it looked like we were in the good, just no precedent.

The $1200 partial refund and status upgrade

Within 48 hours of me providing notice to Hainan Airlines that I'd paid the $243 filing fee and was expecting to see them in court, their offer tripled. Suddenly the final offer became without prejudice offer of a refund of the partially unused flights, at $626.21 per person (covering AKL-HAK-PVG one way). I'm unsure how a $200 became this amount, and we immediately said yes as a downpayment, of-course, this doesn't go anywhere near covering purchasing literal last minute seats on Boxing Day to Shanghai, so we were clear we'd accept it, but still pursuing the full amount. I also added interest costs to our filing with the tribunal, which again is not normally awarded, but is present in MC99. It's also worthy to note at this point, Hainan Airlines hadn't paid us a cent. Even the taxi fares hadn't been reimbursed yet. The only monies recovered were the check-in PE upgrades we purchased through our credit card chargeback.

Interestingly, they also offered us an upgrade on their loyalty program. This would be a nice touch if their sign up actually allowed foreign numbers!

Hainan's $6500 concession

The Disputes Tribunal was surprisingly efficient. We filed in early February and they had set a date for 7th April within 10 days. Amusingly, they printed off the PDF of evidence I had filed as part of my claim, then scanned it all up again, and sent it back to me and to Hainan Airlines. I had luckily captured every interaction and detail of our experience in screenshots, emails and logs. Everything from Google Flights to Hainan's live chats. The evidence was overwhelming and they knew what I had. In early March, a month out from the hearing, we get another email from Hainan Airlines - their head office had approved full reimbursement of the China Eastern flights. Internally they broke this down as a full refund of the unused Hainan flights, plus extra compensation to cover the balance for the China Eastern tickets, which was basically our claim. Clearly they had gone through the evidence I had to share, read up on the Montreal Convention and came to their senses. On our end, we had always maintained with the airline we wouldn't pursue interest charges if they settled before end of February, and this came close enough to drop that and settle.

One final barb - given the airline's "promise" of refunding the taxis and the unprejudiced refund of our tickets that never eventuated, I made it clear that the court case wouldn't be withdrawn until funds were settled in our bank account. So at the time of writing, the case is still on!

Settlement Arrives

Four weeks out from the hearing date, the settlement has finally arrived. Hainan Airlines paid us more than $5,800 in reimbursement for the last minute replacement flights we had to take. Our original tickets were just $3.2K NZD, but that doesn't matter. We got what we were entitled to under law.

To conclude - stand up for yourself

Anyway folks, thanks for reading this far, and I hope it was helpful. The key takeaway is this - you are protected by the Montreal Convention - the consumer law for most international airlines. If your flight is like the Hainan Airlines cancelled flight HU786, don't let airlines push you around. If they do, fight back, and fight back fast and hard utilizing the Montreal Convention if applicable. File the claim in court if they stall or mess you around, so the fight happens in the foreground of a ticking judiciary date. Yes you lose the filing fee in court, but it's probably the only way to force their hand.

As for Hainan Airlines, a quick google search shows how many people have had problems with Hainan's approach to involuntary delays and cancellations. If you are in this situation, I hope my story above helps you with your fight. Don't back down, back yourself.