Cathay Pacific Review

I flew two legs with Cathay: Hyderabad to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to Auckland. The two experiences were quite different.

Part One: CX646 from Hyderabad to Hong Kong

This is a wide-body plane with a 2-4-2 seating configuration. I’d picked an aisle seat in the 4 block with the hope that it would give me the best chance of an empty seat beside me, but it wasn’t to be. The plane was entirely full and I only saw one empty seat in the entire 2 economy cabins. (I was one of the last to board, so I had a fairly good view as I walked through).

Seats were standard for economy with a fairly new and large touch-screen for entertainment. They even had a USB socket for charging, but unfortunately my USB cable was in the overhead locker some rows away from my seat, so I didn’t get to use it.

I’d experimented with ordering a special meal on this flight. On my last two flights (which were 2am departures), half the plane had special meals, and then by the time the rest of us got ours, we’d lost probably a good hour of sleeping time. So I thought that if I ordered a special meal (gluten free) then I’d get served first too and could sleep earlier. However, Cathay with a take-off of 3am doesn’t serve food immediately, just water. They turned the lights down so we could sleep and then woke us up again for food exactly 2 hours before landing. The food was ok: idly, sambar, yoghurt and fruit salad, but nothing wonderful.

Part Two: CX197 from Hong Kong to Auckland

This flight didn’t have an auspicious start, but that was the fault of Hong Kong’s airport authorities rather than Cathay Pacific. Apparently the incoming flight was on time, but the airport didn’t have a gate for it. The gate allocations kept changing, variously showing gates 33, 1, 522 and 523. We did eventually board buses (seating for 5, standing room for 78) outside 523 to be driven out to the remote plane. By the time we were boarded and got a spot in the take-off queue, it was 55 minutes after our original departure.

This plane was quite different to the first one. The economy seats are hard-shell seats, meaning they do not recline at all. Instead, you get a kind of recline by having the seat slide forward and the back sliding down and a bit forward. I only tried it out once because in contrast to the previous flight, there was a lot of free space on this one. The rear economy cabin was mostly empty and I had the 4 centre seats to myself so I could stretch out and sleep. However, some consequences of the hard shell make this a little more difficult than necessary. Apparently some regulation means that to prevent injuries in the event of a crash, if the seats are hard-shell, there has to be an airbag. So they have put the airbag in the seatbelt:

It is not terribly uncomfortable when sitting upright, but having those massive airbags on the seats does make it a bit difficult to lie down. They can’t easily be moved out of the way.

The in-flight entertainment is the older-style non-touch screen with the remote mounted below the screen. Sadly, there was no USB port so my poor phone just has to stay on 30% charge. There was a socket where I could plug in my laptop. Despite being a universal socket, it didn’t work with my NZ plug. It apparently only works with a UK/Hong Kong style plug.

Getting my meal first didn’t really help me get to sleep any earlier actually. Firstly, the meal was pretty bland – grilled chicken breast and veges and a revolting gluten free bun. And then, you still have to wait until they come and clean up the trays before you can really get set to sleep. (And for me, it really helps when they turn off the cabin lights). The french red wine was decent though, and a couple of glasses of that helped with the sleep.

At the other end of the flight, the special meal meant I got woken up promptly as soon as they started meal service. That meal also wasn’t really worth waking up for: a handful of potato wedges, a few mushrooms and tomatoes, a fruit salad and yoghurt. I would rather have had the scrambled eggs &ampamp sausages.

I think I’ll declare the special meal experiment a failure, and will cancel my special meal request for my return flights.