Review of Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Singapore in Economy

First of all, a happy new year to everyone! Hopefully 2023 will be better with Covid restrictions going away and we'll see more trip reports on CX and to/from HKG!

Back in June 2019, we decided to do a 3 day flash trip to Singapore for a reason I don't remember. Anyways, as my dad was a Diamond member, we have decided to fly Cathay again, this time on their newer A350 series. I have already taken the -900 series once and the -1000 series once, but I'll introduce the seat thoroughly as this is one of my first trip reports on the A350.

Introduction

We arrived at HKG at around 7:15am and was able to use the First Class check-in area. Then, we hurried to line up at the extremely long queue for immirgration, which is not usually the case at the very efficient HKIA. Thankfully, we cleared security in just 15-20 minutes.
We then headed to The Wing (First Class section) for a light bite before our flight as my dad was a Diamond Member at the time of flying.

Lounge - The Wing

The first class section of the Wing included an a la carte dining section. As we didn't have too much time, we just order some parma ham and a delicious cup of Cathay Delight. It was my first time drinking it and I must say I've fallen in love with it!
I also got some dim sum (har gau) and it tasted pretty terrible. I don't think I've ever had good dim sum on CX (including at TPE, SIN and HKG)

Boarding

We left the lounge pretty late as the gate was close to the lounge and was surprised to find that boarding is nearly over with "Final Call" displayed. The priority boarding lane has been cleared but some economy class passengers were still boarding. I find that a norm for CX in particular to display "final call" extremely early on.

Anyways, a nice look of our bird today, B-LRC, an A350-900 delivered to CX in 2016. It has been 3 years old on the day of flight.
I really like the curvy wingtips on the A350 opposed to the wings of the 787.
(RIP the 2 Cathay Dragon planes at the back) 

Seat

My seat for today is an aisle seat. Compared to the 777s, the A350s offer the same amount of pitch (32 inches) but significantly more seat width at 18 inches. It also made the ride pretty comfortable. These seats are also slightly different compared to the ones on the 77Ws.

Seated in row 42, a pretty good seat but I'll soon realise why I made a wrong choice. The seats are equipped with a 11.6 inch IFE screen with a lot of movies, TV shows, games and music.

We were delayed by quite a bit so I started watching movies on the ground. CX plays pretty lengthy ads before videos and this was one of them. However, it was based in Singapore and was actually quite entertaining.
A Senior FA also came and addressed my dad by name and handed him a bottle of Evian water (a perk that only Gold+ members have!). Pretty surprised to see that as on previous flights, we've never had FAs come and greet us. The purser even stopped by for a small talk with us, which was a nice gesture. We finally took off at around 9am. 

Meal service

As this wasn't too short of a flight, meal service was quite slow and the crew started with one round of drinks (with only juice available for some reason). My main course was delivered about 1.5 hours after departure.
I picked the eggs over the beef congee that I once had and hated. I also heard bad reviews about the congee on CX. (Side note: these are usually the 2 options available in Economy no matter where you're flying to, long or short haul. I did see some passengers having dim sum/fried noodles in Business class though) 

The meal was decent, better than your average airline breakfast I guess. (Aside from the absolutely horrible potato chunk which I gave up after taking a bite)

It also came with a bit of fruit, a warm bun, a cup of pineappple juice and water. I kinda forgot how they tasted so I assume they weren't horrible nor extremely tasty.
The crew were friendly albeit a bit slow in terms of doing service, which would be a problem on shorter flights like my TPE-HKG one.

Anyways, as to why I chose the wrong seat for today. 3 really disruptive teenage girls were sitting behind us and they KEPT hitting my seat with their legs and talking loudly. It was pretty unbearable and it only stopped after I glared at them a couple times. Should've asked the crew to stop them.

Landing and disembarking

We landed at around 12pm and followed by an extremely lengthy taxi, we arrived at the newly open Terminal 4 at Changi. Cathay flights have been moved here since the end of 2017.
Welcome to a cloudy/rainy Singapore! The weather is always great and showers only happen for like 20 minutes per day, so don't be fooled by the bad-looking weather here.

Last look at B-LRC, which will then operate a SIN-BKK-HKG service back to Hong Kong (now defunct :( )

Immirgration was quick and we were out in around 15 minutes. A quick note to Terminal 4 at SIN though - you have to take a shuttle bus back to T2 for the MRTstation and there were no skytrains to other terminals. The bus was filled with luggage (there were no luggage racks, seriously?) and it took a lengthy 10 minutes to arrive at Terminal 2. From there, we took the MRT into the city. Wish they could build a skytrain line to T2, or just keep T4 to LCCs-only.