Cathay Pacific.

Good Service but inflexible "system"

I am a little confused by the weird policy by Cathay Pacific today when I arrived early at Taiwan Taipei airport to go to Hong Kong with a friend and because of our needs, decided to change flight schedules. I would like to fly at 1.05pm to Hong Kong instead of 4:20pm and he would like to fly at 4:20pm as his connecting flight is at 6:00pm. I would not mind arriving at HK earlier to meet a friend and he would love to stay in Taiwan a little longer and wait for some samples to be sent to him and wait less at Hong Kong. In the end, both our requests were turned down due to our "ticket codes"

I am not sure why there is a policy that would not allow us to switch flights as I feel that since everything is computerized and we are switching flight times (seats), how hard is it to do this simple change of us. Why is the "system" so inflexible for such a request?

So far the customer service on Cathay Pacific has been pretty good, and I would definitely prefer to fly Cathay Pacific compared to many other airlines, however I feel that a good airline with a good service, should have a good system to cater for more conveniences.

I am infact quite surprised that such an inflexible practice is still prevalient in today's competitive airline industry. But I guess, no airline is perfect.

-- Iron Bowl