Hi all

I am flying Xiamen Airline MF875 from Tianjin Airport to KLIA. Flight information shows the MF875 departed from Tianjin Airport (Fig 1) and arrived KLIA (Fig 2). However, 13 passengers including myself have not arrived. Why? Two MF875 planes are in the sky at the same time. Another plane took off from Fuzhou (Fig. 3). Please advices on,

1) Safety issue – Is that allow this kind of cheating? Flight number is unique. How can 2 MF875 appeared in the sky at the same time. Luckily, not being shot down. Pilot has responsibilities also.
2) No alternative flight arrangement – Xiamen Airline plan all these and did not provide alternative flight. My case is emergency case.
3) No compensation – Xiamen airline decline compensation for one day delay.
4) Decline any written clarification – I phone customer services and Xiamen Airline decline any written clarification of the issue.

Bless my safe flight tomorrow and please kindly advices. Thanks!

Lam



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MF875 operates TSN-FUC-KUL. It is perfectly normal. I dont see any problem with that.

Honkin

1) Before the first MF875 arrived TSN-FUC, Xiamen Airlines used another a second plane as second MF875 departed FUC-KUL. Is that common in airlines industry? Will sky county of the country misinterpret as sky invasion of enemy such MH17 being shot down in Ukraine?

2) When the first MF875 completed the journey TSN-FUC, MF857 declined to continue the journey. Let say, I took a cab from home to hospital as emergency purpose. I booked the ticket one day before for emergency case. The cab departed from home and stop at mid point to pick up passengers. However, after arriving the mid point, the cab decline to send me to hospital and I was being put in the mid point. Is that common in airline industry?

Please kindly advise.

Lam

I won't take it as serious as getting shot down, but I don't see why they cannot do that.

Was the TSN-FUC sector late?

db07mufan

Maybe I am a bit conscious after 3 planes down last years. Normally, I won't relate to the worse condition, but I am worrying on any irregular procedure.

I am only car driver and have no idea with the plane numbering system. Please share your view for correction. If I have a car WMF 8857, I drove from Penang to KL and stop at Ipoh to pick up peoples. Surely, if there is two car with same plates (let says WMF 8857) appeared on road, it is abnormally to me. I will relate,

1) JPJ will stop both cars with same plate number. We can not use two cars with same plate number.
2) Car insurance covers only one car WMF 8857. If two cars with same plate have accidents, I don't think insurance company will cover.

Please share your opinions if this case in airline industry instead of on road.

The flight delays from TJN-FUC. It has haze and some flights decide to take off and some flights decides not to take off. Flight MF857 decided not to take off.

Most difficult part. Xiamen airline decided not to fly us to KL on that day. I am wonder why they don't tell me on advances and I still have time to transit to Beijing airport for emergency case.

On delay insurance, it may have difficulties also. It showed the plane arrived with only two hours delay. Definitely not the original MF857 but the second MF857. Confusion to insurance company.

This post has been edited by joshuawhlam: Dec 29 2015, 12:09 PM

If you are to take cars as an analogy, plane identification is done through aircraft registrations, normally you see nearby the tail of the aircraft, for Malaysian registered aircraft it will start with a 9M prefix. No two planes can have the same registration. And yes you can have two flights of the same flight number in the sky at the same time. This would normally happen for very delayed flights, or for some reason the flight has been diverted to another airport.

I would give you an example. Flight MH002 is flying from Kuala Lumpur to London, lands in London and is unable to depart back to KUL as MH001 due to technical problem. It takes them 24 hours to fix it. By the time it is fixed, the next day MH002 flight lands in London. They then both depart back as MH001. One is MH001 from previous day (DELAYED), one is the ontime MH001. This is how you can have two planes of the same flight number in the sky in the same time. It is certainly not ILLEGAL, but sometimes to avoid confusion especially when the pilots talk to air traffic control, and the two planes are right around each other, they will add a suffix, so the delayed flight number will be MH001D. This is only known to air traffic controllers and pilots only, passengers will only know the flight as a very delayed MH001.

The case of having two flights of same number in the sky at the same time is trivial and should be the least of your concern. Plane insurance (not travel insurance) covers the airline as a whole, not by flights.

As what honkit said, your flight is from Tianjin-Fuzhou-Kuala Lumpur. Tianjin-Fuzhou portion is delayed, thus will cause Fuzhou-Kuala Lumpur to be delayed as well. There are passengers booked on Tianjin-Fuzhou-Kuala Lumpur, there are passengers booked on Tianjin-Fuzhou, there are passengers booked on Fuzhou-Kuala Lumpur. Fuzhou-Kuala Lumpur will be delayed definately because of the late arrival of the plane from Tianjin. Operations Control Centre of the airline will then have to make a decision, do i DELAY the Fuzhou-KL flight? Or do I pull another new aircraft and crew to fly Fuzhou-KL. As I understand only 13 passengers continue on to KL from Tianjin, so there are probably another 70% of passengers waiting in Fuzhou. From a commercial standpoint its cheaper to compensate the 13 of you rather than to compensate the rest of the passengers that is in Fuzhou because of your delayed flight. This is what i think the rationale is behind all that.

On why they do not want to fly you on that day to KUL is because the only flight to KUL has already left, and its cheaper for them to put you in hotels (if they do) and give you meal vouchers (if they do) than to dispatch an aircraft just to fly 13 of you back to KL.

I can only can comment as above as how an airline decides to handle delayed/cancelled flight passengers is completely up to them but from the looks of it they did not do their recovery well.

This post has been edited by db07mufan: Dec 29 2015, 01:23 PM

Appreciate the kind sharing.

Thats right. db07mufan is entirely right.

Thanks