Hello from Sydney! I’m fresh off a flight in Cathay Pacific 777 business class from Hong Kong to Sydney. It’s been years since I’ve flown Cathay Pacific business class longhaul, and despite knowing that they’ve been going on somewhat of a cost-cutting trajectory, I had high hopes for the experience. After the flight, I’m happy to say that Cathay Pacific still offers a pretty good longhaul product. While the product they offer is pretty no-frills, they’re able to execute the basics perfectly, so I came off this flight with pretty positive impressions.
My flight was operated by a 777-300ER without first class, and I’d assigned my family seats along the left side of the plane, as is our new preference when assigning seats in reverse herringbone business class as a family.
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Cabin
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Cabin
While we were able to secure seats in a row, it meant that one of us would be sitting in 19A, a seat without a window. I’m not sure how I didn’t manage to catch that when selecting my seat six months in advance, but my dad offered to take the seat instead, so he gave me seat 18A, which I’m thankful for.
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Seat 19A
The seat itself is really spacious, as you’d expect from a reverse herringbone seat on one of the widest cabin fuselages in the industry. I’ve complained about the padding before, but I had no qualms sleeping in this seat, probably due to the sufficient head privacy and the late departure time. Cathay Pacific has updated their pillow and blanket in the meantime, and I’m happy to say that I consider the new bedding an improvement – the old blankets tended to get hot easily, while these new ones are textured on one side, so were more insulating. I slept for a good 6-7 hours, and that’s despite having work to do.
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Bed
In the meantime they’d also updated their amenities kit. I didn’t like their old one, but their new amenities kit is really nice, and is outfitted with all the basics, including an eye mask, socks, moisturising amenities and a dental kit.
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Amenity Kit
Cathay Pacific also changed their headphones fleetwide. The new headphones are noticeably noise-canceling, though my pair started buzzing when the cable was angled in certain ways, which was annoying. While the noise-canceling function is one of the best I’ve had for airplane headphones, I still used my own Bose set, as it’s better.
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Headphones
Service on this flight was great, and I was addressed by name during most interactions. Everyone managed to be in good spirits despite having to work on the first day of the Lunar New Year, which I appreciate, so my compliments. They were also extremely efficient with our “supper” service – it took 20 minutes from when my table was set to when my main course was taken away. While the appetiser and dessert were lazy (dips and fruit, respectively), my lamb main course was bursting with flavour, despite being slightly on the overcooked side (it wasn’t as overcooked as it looks in the below picture – on another note, my mother really enjoyed her shrimp main course as well).
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Meal
One cool thing about Cathay Pacific’s non-first class 777s is that they were originally designed to be installed with first class seats, so one of the forward bathrooms is still outfitted for first class. This means that there’s a porcelain sink that looks crazy nice, and the bathroom is also of a much bigger size, which was good for longer bathroom breaks.
Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Business Class Lavatory
Also, we lucked out with really good weather in Sydney, and we kept turning left during our approach, which made for some amazing views.
Landing Sydney Airport
Bottom Line
Cathay Pacific doesn’t offer the best business class product, and sometimes I complain about their branding trying too hard in the wrong areas. That said, I was very pleasantly surprised by how well the product was executed, and would fly Cathay Pacific again in a heartbeat. If anything, I’m excited to see how Hong Kong Airlines compares, as I’ll be flying them (shorthaul) next month. I know that this perfect execution isn’t always the case, so I’ll find out more on my flight home next week.
This was a redeye flight that was nine hours long, so I slept through most of it. My return flight will be an afternoon flight that I won’t be sleeping through, so that way I’ll be able to provide an even more extensive review of the experience. Either way, I’m looking forward to my week in New South Wales. I’ll be spending the weekend by Blue Mountains, and will be spending the bulk of next week in Sydney for the first time, which I’m looking forward to.
Do you have any travel plans this Chinese New Year?