Air New Zealand Will Lease EVA Air 777 On Los Angeles Route

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

EVA Air is competitive in all of their airline cabins. While their cabin colour tones are bland and their premium economy experience can be hit-or-miss (as writer Ethan realised), they have reverse herringbone seats in business class on their 777s (which they fly on a majority of their longhaul flights now that they’ve retired all of their 747s), which I consider to be one of the world’s business class hard products. In addition to that, they have a plush premium economy seat, though they do have a 3-4-3 configuration in economy class on the 777, which has sadly become the industry standard.

EVA Air Boeing 777 Business Class Cabin

All of EVA Air’s US routes are now flown with 777s, though as of this October, it won’t only be out of Taipei where you’ll get to fly an EVA Air plane to the U.S. on a longhaul flight.

Continue reading “Air New Zealand Will Lease EVA Air 777 On Los Angeles Route” →

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BOOK NOW: Cheap Cathay Pacific Fares From Mainland China to New York City

~ Jason ~ Leave a comment

As part of Cathay Pacific’s latest push into the mainland Chinese market, they are now offering a series of cheap fares for travel between Beijing or Shanghai to New York. While this doesn’t really sit well with Cathay’s improved yields, I’m not exactly complaining.

Cathay Pacific’s 777 business class, which you’ll get on a majority of flights from Hong Kong to the U.S. – not the world’s best experience, though a very, good seat

These fares are for travel during December of this year. While dates tend to vary, I recommend heading over to Cathay’s website where you’ll find a published “matrix” of fare information with information about the cheapest days to fly. These fares generally tend to pop up with a departure date from early December onwards and a return date from after the 23rd of December, although it’s best to check dates that you will be travelling on.

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Finnair’s Nordic Sky WiFi

~ Jason ~ Leave a comment

I flew Finnair (yes, for the third year in a row) to Europe. While I won’t be reviewing my flights, I’ll be writing some posts about my experiences. On my flights, I had the chance to check out their Nordic Sky portal on both my long-haul flight from Bangkok to Helsinki and my regional connection from Helsinki to Prague. The portal was redesigned last year to make it more user-friendly, which rolled out along with new restrictions on WiFi usage on oneworld elite and Business Class passengers. With that in mind, I thought I’d review the internet service and the WiFi portal.

IMG_0056Finnair Airbus A350 Business Class Wifi 

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A Disappointing Stay at the Hilton Budapest

~ Jason ~ Leave a comment

I just wrapped up a whirlwind week-long trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest. While I’ll have more to report on from the trip (including the best hotel stay of my entire life), I wanted to write about a pretty disappointing experience that I had staying at the Hilton Budapest.

While we were going back and forth on our hotel option in Budapest (including holding a hotel stay at a different but similar-calibre hotel until a couple nights prior to our stay), our family decided to book a Loft Suite at the Hilton Budapest.

Our first impressions of the hotel were really positive. The hotel is located in the historic Castle District, which was truly gorgeous. However, be warned that this is across the Danube River from the city centre (Pest), which means that it’ll take a while to get to some tourist attractions. While I personally didn’t mind this, especially since I really love walking around cities, my parents found it especially annoying that we would have to make the 20-odd minute trek and a funicular ride, or hail a taxi if we wanted to nap or grab some stuff from the hotel during the day.

IMG_7288.jpgHilton Budapest Exterior

Continue reading “A Disappointing Stay at the Hilton Budapest” →

A Disappointing Cathay Pacific Service Experience

~ Jason ~ Leave a comment

Let me just preface this post by saying that this wasn’t a terrible flight by any means. However, having had the good fortune to fly Cathay Pacific pretty frequently over the past few years, the service that I received on this flight was pretty abysmal and not at all what I would expect from one of the world’s best airlines, so I thought I’d just share about this experience here. 

A few days ago, I flew from Hong Kong to Bangkok on one of Cathay Pacific’s late-night frequencies, which was operated by their regionally-configured A330 (Alvin’s flown this in the past, but in the meantime all the regional A330s with their newer economy seats were transferred to Cathay Dragon, leaving Cathay Pacific with shell seats on all but one of their regional A330s). Going into this flight, I was expecting it to be representative of your average Cathay Pacific regional experience — comfortable and decent, but nothing too surprising. As you can probably guess by this point, it turned out to be one of the most disappointing flights I’ve ever had on Cathay Pacific.

This specific flight pattern involves a night flight down to Bangkok, a one-night layover and then a morning or early afternoon return from Bangkok. This clearly isn’t especially desirable for crews, and it really showed in the service.

Continue reading “A Disappointing Cathay Pacific Service Experience” →

Save 15% Off Your Next Korean Air Premium Ticket With AmEx (HK$18,500 RT Business Class to Vancouver For Christmas)

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Korean Air is offering 15% off all premium cabin tickets to all AmEx Hong Kong cardholders from Hong Kong to Korea, the Americas, and Japan before February 28, 2019.

This is in addition to the 10% discount that they are offering to all economy tickets within the same time period.

Korean Air features one of my favourite business class products, with Apex Suites in business class. These are fully flat seats that are especially private, if you can snag a window seat. I flew Korean Air’s business class from Hong Kong to Seoul and back, and was pleased with the experience.

Fly one of the world’s best business class hard products longhaul for 15% off

While Korean Air currently hasn’t scheduled any aircraft with this business class configuration to fly between Seoul and Hong Kong after October 28 (you can learn which product your flight will feature using this post), many of Korean Air’s longhaul flights to the U.S. and Canada currently feature their newest business class seat.

Here’s how to get 15% off your next Korean Air flight in a premium cabin.

Continue reading “Save 15% Off Your Next Korean Air Premium Ticket With AmEx (HK$18,500 RT Business Class to Vancouver For Christmas)” →

Only Three Thai Airways A330s Are Getting A New Business Class Product

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Last month I wrote about Thai Airways’ new A330 business class product, which is their seventh unique business class configuration. They have two types of angled flat products, a staggered business class seat for longhaul flights, two different unique products on their 787s, a recliner configuration on their last 737, and they introduced a new Solstys style staggered business class product that would be outfitted on some of their A330s.

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Brand New THAI Royal Silk Class product on the Airbus 330-300 (HS-TEN). A big change compared to the previous setting indeed. A pity the flight to Krabi is so short. Bangkok, Thailand (Jul 2018) •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• #gabezrh_thailand #gabezrh_bangkok #gabezrh_aviation #gabezrh_bkk #gabezrh_tg #thailand #bangkok #krabi #태국 #방콕 #크라비 #크라비여행 #krabitrip #visitthailand #thailandtrip #thailandtour #flythai #thai #thaiairways #royalsilkclass #businessclass #luxurytravel #bkkkbv #tg249 #hsten #airlinecabin #airplanecabin #cabincrew #newbusinessclass ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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Well, we have even more information about the retrofit process, which makes the process even more confusing.

Continue reading “Only Three Thai Airways A330s Are Getting A New Business Class Product” →

How To Know Which First/Business Class Product You’re Getting On Korean Air

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

This should be particularly useful for those of us in Hong Kong flying to Seoul in a Korean Air premium cabin, as I’m sure Korean Air has a “never fly the same aircraft type with the same flight number twice” policy on each of their four daily flights between these two cities. 😉

Korean Air has one of the most poorly designed airline websites I’ve had the pleasure of using. It’s easy to actually (dummy) book and access flights, though there’s a buffer time upon selecting each seat upon seat selection (you have to wait 8-10 seconds after you select each seat, so you better not misclick), you can’t “cross-reference” cabins (pull up economy and business class fares at the same time), a lot of the time you can’t check-in online because of issues with Korean Air’s website with verifying non-Korean credit cards, and mobile boarding passes rarely work during check-in.

It’s a shame, because the onboard experience is exceedingly pleasant, and in quite a few cases, competitive – especially in economy.

However, there’s one benefit to Korean Air’s website – it’s very easy to identify which product you’ll be getting (provided there isn’t an equipment swap). The issue is that no one seems to know – I’ve seen so many complaints, even from so-called “travel experts”, when flying Korean Air that they had no idea which product they were getting. I decided I’d write about that in a separate post.

So, here’s how you know which premium product you’re going to be flying on a Korean Air flight:

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Review: Korean Air 777 Business Class Seoul to Hong Kong

~ Alvin ~ Leave a comment

Introduction: A Wandering Seoul
SkyTeam Lounge Hong Kong
Korean Air 747-8 Business Class Hong Kong To Seoul (First Class Seat)
Park Hyatt Seoul Park Suite Twin
Korean Air Business Class Lounge Seoul Incheon Terminal 2 (East)
Korean Air Business Class Lounge Seoul Incheon Terminal 2 (West)
Korean Air 777 Business Class Seoul to Hong Kong

After visiting both of Korean Air’s dismal new lounges at Incheon Airport, it was time to head home to Hong Kong. I got to gate 252 and enquired to the gate agent if I could be assigned a first class seat, since they were selling them as business class seats on our flight (I did something similar on our outbound flight on the 747-8, and got lucky). Unfortunately I got a firm no from the gate agent – while he was cold, the gate agent showed me the system on his computer screen to prove that those seats were reserved for full-fare business class passengers (we were booked into the lowest fare bucket), which I thought was a very responsible thing to do.

While the majority of “our” gate area faced parked at the gate next to us, from the corner of the gate area I spotted the 777-300ER that would be flying us home.

Korean Air Boeing 777 Seoul Incheon Airport

I was “gate lice” for around 10-15 minutes since I wanted to get better cabin pictures, and soon they started up boarding for the infirm, followed by business class passengers. There was a rather old man in a wheelchair that had brought his family of around nine people, and they were all seated in business class, which I found rather interesting (and was happy about, since I always feel terrible when an infirm passenger is seated in economy).

Continue reading “Review: Korean Air 777 Business Class Seoul to Hong Kong” →

A Guide to Cathay Pacific’s Marco Polo Club

~ Jason ~ Leave a comment

Anyone who has flown with Cathay Pacific will have no doubt heard of the Marco Polo Club. “The Club”, as it’s sometimes referred to, is Cathay Pacific’s frequent flyer program, rewarding high-flyers with elite status. Despite how well-known the Marco Polo Club itself is, people generally tend to have a limited understanding of its inner workings and often have many unanswered questions about the program. Because I’m obsessed with Cathay Pacific and basically have no life, I thought it would be a good idea to dispel some common misconceptions about the program and do a quick “guide for dummies” about the program.

img_5635Cathay Pacific Boeing 777-300ER

Continue reading “A Guide to Cathay Pacific’s Marco Polo Club” →