I said it before and I’ll say it again: Thai Airways is not to be trusted. As my Tahiti Triumph Trip approaches with my Tahiti Diet on lock, I thought I would check to see if my United Airlines miles had posted from the good old days of churning. While they were there in their majestic beauty, my return flight from PPT to PVG by way of BKK was not. This is the third or maybe the fourth time that my return flight to Shanghai had gone missing.
I called United again and the agent said that she could restore my flight again. Not especially excited about the prospect of this happening while I was abroad, I asked if there was another flight from Auckland to Shanghai that I could take that was not aboard Thai Airways. There was some good news and some okay news.
The good news is that there was a flight on Air China aboard an A330 from AKL-PEK-SHA. Arriving in SHA is much better than arriving in PVG because it is closer to the city center. The good news is also learning that I wouldn’t have to fly Thai Business 777 of which nobody has anything good to say.
The okay news is that I would only have a one night layover in Auckland instead of two. Since I wouldn’t have time to explore more of New Zealand than Auckland in either one or two days, this wasn’t that big of a deal. On the contrary, I will arrive bright and early in Shanghai giving me more time in my favorite city.
Still, let’s not get caught up in the bright lights of Beijing smog. The point of this post is Thai Airways’ incredible behavior. Even if United restored my reservation again, who’s to say that it won’t drop off when I’m flying from PPT-AKL? Thai Airways knows how to take the reservation, it just doesn’t know how to hold the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation: the holding.
Hopefully, there will only be pleasant surprises from here on out.
