Category: Cathay Pacific

FINALLY: Cathay Pacific Adds Much Needed Long-Haul Business Class Amenities

~ Alvin ~ 2 Comments

Cathay Pacific has a business class product that I find incredibly solid. Now that Cathay Pacific is installing WiFi onto a majority of their fleet, I actually find their premium cabins a very pleasant way to fly. Their A350 business class is currently my favourite business class seat out there – the sleeping surface is maximised, the storage is done right, and reverse herringbone seats are incredibly pleasant to start with.

Cathay Pacific Airbus A350 Business Class Bed

Unfortunately as of now they don’t exactly have the amenities to match. While Cathay Pacific has a decent pillow and blanket on longhaul flights, I find some of the basics to be lacking. One of the most annoying things about Cathay Pacific amenities is that they provide socks…and no slippers. Who wants to be walking towards an airplane bathroom in socks, soaking up all the…nevermind.

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Review: Cathay Pacific The Deck Lounge Hong Kong

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Introduction: Revisiting Tokyo…Twice
Cathay Pacific The Deck Lounge Hong Kong
Japan Airlines 777-200 Business Class Hong Kong to Tokyo
Hotel Century Southern Tower Tokyo
Scoot 787 ScootBiz Tokyo to Taipei
Cathay Pacific A350-1000 Business Class Taipei to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific A330 Economy Class Hong Kong to Tokyo
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Tokyo to Hong Kong

In 2015, Cathay Pacific opened a couple of lounges under a brand new design, which they created in partnership with London-based design brand Studiolise. While many newer lounges worldwide have upped their game recently, I don’t think any lounges have been as widely appraised as Cathay Pacific’s since this partnership started. In 2016, Cathay Pacific opened The Pier’s business class section at Hong Kong Airport, which serves as their flagship lounge alongside the adjacent First Class section. I had the chance to visit The Pier shortly after it opened, and it continues to be one of my favourite lounges today.

The same year they closed the G16 lounge, a lounge that used to belong to Dragonair but was redundant now that Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon shared the same lounge access policies, for renovation. I visited the lounge shortly before it closed, and yeah, it was a bit of a dump. In March 2018 the lounge reopened as The Deck, which was their second lounge in Hong Kong designed under the same ethos.

The lounge is located by gate 6 (Hong Kong Airport changed their gate numbers slightly – gates 15 to 22 have become gates 5 to 12, as they’re building a footbridge to the North Satellite Concourse and renumbering gates 501-510 as gates 13-22), where signage leads passengers up an escalator and into a slick matte-finished entrance.

Cathay Pacific The Deck Lounge Hong Kong Entrance

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Introduction: Revisiting Tokyo…Twice

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Introduction: Revisiting Tokyo…Twice
Cathay Pacific The Deck Lounge Hong Kong
Japan Airlines 777-200 Business Class Hong Kong to Tokyo
Hotel Century Southern Tower Tokyo
Scoot 787 ScootBiz Tokyo to Taipei
Cathay Pacific A350-1000 Business Class Taipei to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific A330 Economy Class Hong Kong to Tokyo
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Tokyo to Hong Kong

Before I start this trip report, I’m fully aware that I never managed to finish my Bangkok trip report. I’ll get back to that, but now that I’m back in somewhat of a trip report writing slump, I wanted to write about something that I like writing about – flying. (While there’s a flight report I’ve yet to write in the Bangkok series, I’d still like to document my time at the Siam Kempinski Bangkok – which takes a while.)

The inspiration for the trip began when I was looking at a short excursion abroad using expiring Asia Miles after my exams. I’m trying to make a switchover to American AAdvantage (which has been a complete PITA, though I’m finding a few workarounds as of late), so I’m trying to use Asia Miles to fly premium products that I otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to. One of the airlines I’ve really wanted to fly is Japan Airlines, so I found some award space between Hong Kong and Tokyo Haneda. I haven’t been to Tokyo since 2010, so it seemed like a good time to revisit a city I remember loving. (They also had award space on a morning flight to Tokyo Narita, which I would’ve otherwise preferred, though flying their reverse herringbone product seemed more exciting than flying their last-generation angled flat product.) This cost 30,000 Asia Miles per person.

Japan Airlines Boeing 777 Business Class

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What Is Cathay Pacific’s 10-Abreast 777 Economy Class Like?

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Ah, finally. After so many speculative posts, the time had come for me to try out Cathay Pacific’s 10-abreast economy class configuration. Boeing 777s were created so they could fit 9 economy seats across one row, though the norm for airline gradually shifted to cramming in an extra seat in order to maximise capacity. Cathay Pacific decided to jump onto the bandwagon in 2017, while the first aircraft with narrower seats started flying in April 2018.

I’ve been very critical of Cathay Pacific’s decision to switch their comfortable economy seats, which I found one of the world’s best, to these seats. I was convinced that even disregarding width, they wouldn’t be as comfortable. So I was intentional to book myself a flight in these seats on a recent trip to Tokyo, so I could personally see what the seats were like.

Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Tokyo Narita Airport

Generally I consider myself to predict the quality of a hard product very accurately. I’ve been blogging in the aviation industry for 6+ years, and I’m also an aspiring engineer. The least I could do is accurately predict how comfortable a seat will be, right?

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What Is Cathay Pacific’s A350-1000 Business Class Like?

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

I’m home for a little bit after a nice trip to Tokyo. My relax time is cut short since I’m flying back to Tokyo to spend some time with a group of friends tomorrow (yes, this is the coveted graduation trip), though I had commitments in the area today.

One of the main reasons I went to Tokyo was to review Japan Airlines’ 777 business class and Scoot’s 787 ScootBiz, though once space opened up I jumped on the opportunity to fly Cathay Pacific’s A350-1000 business class from Taipei to Hong Kong. I used 1,000 Asia Miles to change my flight (from a 777-300), and flew the hourlong flight last night.

Cathay Pacific Airbus A350-1000 Hong Kong Airport

So how was my experience in Cathay Pacific’s A350-1000? Surprisingly, it was excellent, and easily the best out of the three flights I’d taken on this trip.

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BOOKED: JAL Business Class, Cathay Pacific First Class

~ Alvin ~ 1 Comment

There are many good uses of miles. One thing I like is to buy miles during a promotion, when you can score a flight in a cabin that otherwise would’ve cost you double. Another way I like to use miles is to maximise them – for example, flying from Hong Kong to Perth for 65,000 KrisFlyer miles roundtrip, when Hong Kong to Taipei costs 40,000 KrisFlyer miles (actually…)

But there’s no better way than to fly from point A to point B with purpose and redeeming miles for an amazing product when you realise your miles are about to expire in the coming month.


Japan Airlines Boeing 777 Business Class

This is what happened to my mom late last week, so we spent some time securing a couple of flights for myself and her, and I’m so excited…

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Cathay Pacific Honors New Years Mistake Fare

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Happy new year! How did you spend your new years? I spent mine counting down with a friend, getting home at 12:30 AM, and getting knocked out until 10 AM the next morning – the perfect night, if you ask me. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the guys at Cathay Pacific didn’t have as sweet a night as I did.

Cathay Pacific ran a mistake fare sale a couple of days ago when flights from Vietnam to the U.S. ran for ~HK$5,290 in business class and ~HK$8,000 in first class. Obviously, they probably left out a 0 or something, since a typical Cathay Pacific ticket can barely take you to Hong Kong from Vietnam for that price in a premium cabin.

IMG_0580Cathay Pacific Airbus A350 Business Class Cabin

The fare itself was gone when I woke up, so I couldn’t do any useful reporting on it. Instead I’m just a speculator at this point, and will talk about how I think Cathay Pacific handled this fare.

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I Flew Cathay Pacific’s New Narrower Economy Seat…and Hated It

~ j ~ 2 Comments

TL/DR: Although I can’t blame Cathay Pacific for their new 10-abreast Economy seats, I had an awful experience, and I will be avoiding them like I do with all my school deadlines.

Hello from Hong Kong! I just came back from a short trip to Tokyo and had a fantastic time. This trip was especially noteworthy since it was my very first time flying on Cathay Pacific’s newly retrofitted regional Boeing 777-300 aircraft. In a bid to drive up profits, Cathay has begun rapidly retrofitting it’s Boeing 777 fleet with new “densified” Economy cabins, which squeeze in an extra seat per row. I wanted to book this flight to experience the new cabins myself to see if Cathay delivered on their promise to “ease the pain” of the reduced seat width in the new seats.

img_5635Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 Hong Kong Airport

So, I finally flew the flight last Wednesday – and yeah, the experience wasn’t the best. Here are my first impressions:

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Cathay Pacific Promises Inflight WiFi On All Longhaul Flights By End 2019

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Every now and then we see airlines give ambitious plans that they don’t manage to follow through with. You know Qatar Airways’ beautiful QSuite? That was supposed to be rolled out by 2015, but didn’t make an appearance until 2017 (expect a review of that mid-year, by the way). Remember Cathay Pacific’s first A350? That was supposed to come out in January 2016, but it made its inaugural flight in June.

One of the pet peeves I’ve always had when flying Cathay Pacific is the almost-universal lack of WiFi. I wrote about this at the beginning of the year, as I was irritated by the fact that none of Cathay Pacific’s longest flights featured WiFi. While this is ultimately a first-world problem, inflight WiFi makes the inflight experience much smoother for those traveling on business.

Cathay Pacific’s flights to New York are 16 hours long, and run by 777s; albeit comfortable, these planes don’t feature WiFi

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How To Deal With Cathay Pacific’s Latest Security Breach: “Do”s and “Don’t”s

~ Alvin ~ 2 Comments

Over the past few months Cathay Pacific underwent a security breach where details of many Marco Polo Club/Asia Miles accounts were revealed to the public. Airlines are really strict on security and privacy, due to the extensive documentation they require from you in order to fly you safely; these documents were made vulnerable during the latest security breach.

As you’d expect from any airline (I don’t consider their extensive research into the situation to be impressive by any means, though don’t have any complaints), Cathay Pacific immediately jumped onto the situation, and now account holders are receiving rolling emails about their details’ involvement in the situation.

Most of the below is common sense, but I thought I’d quickly compile a list of “do”s and “don’t”s for what to do, since a large number of accounts were breached.

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