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

Hello Internet, today, I am at Hong Kong International Airport - my home airport, to board my flight to Singapore. Todays flight is a little under four hours and I will be flying on Business Class with Cathay Pacific on their A350 fleet. This is my first flight in Business and also my first flight with Cathay since COVID, which makes this flight extra-exciting for me. 

Ticketing - Qatar Privilage Club and Avios

I booked this ticket with avios on Qatar stock, which recently added Cathay to the small list of airlines that can be reserved on their online system without going through the process with a live agent using their online chat. From experiance, the online chat tends to add a slight revenue fare and therefore it is often wiser to book through the online system instead. Although, the online system occasionally fails to retireve flights and will require a handful (20-ish) refresh of the page to sucessfully show Cathay flight.

Qatar largely shares Cathay award inventory with BA, who also uses Avios. Therefore it is possible to check for availability (but not pricing as the award charts are different, BA being up to three times as expensive) first using the more reliable BA platform before attempting to book with the much cheaper Qatar system.

The flight costs 44000 + 716HKD Round Trip from HKG to SIN, and is booked into fare class U, generally used by Oneworld airlines to denominate business redemption tickets. The ticket comes with two 32KG baggage allowance and features lounge access at Hong Kong and Singapore. Award availability on this sector remains plentiful throughout the year on all flights between the two cities, and is therefore one of the sweeter and easier spots for avios users to spend the miles.

Check-In - Hong Kong

I arrived at the airport six hours ahead of schedule, to increase the amount of time I have to experiance Cathay's award winning lounges at Hong Kong. I headed to the Cathay Business Check-in counters at Aisle B, checked my one bag and obtained my boarding pass and lounge invitation at the counters. I then headed to the self-service kiosk to print two extra copies of my Boarding Pass, one for lounge stamp collection, and another for archives. Cathay's system does not limit or restrict the amount of Boarding Passes you can obtain using the self-service kiosk, and therefore you can obtain as many as you need or like using the machines. Although, the lounge invitation will not be printed alongside the boarding pass if you opt to do so. Hong Kong's self-service kiosks prints boarding passes on actual ticket stock and from experiances, does not easily fade. This is a godsend to fellow boarding pass collectors and is one of the reasons that makes Hong Kong such a memorable airport for everyone.

After checking in, I headed to the security lines to enter the airside of the airport. Business passengers with Cathay does not recieve priority security screening at Hong Kong, which is extremely disappointing as Cathay is based in Hong Kong. To it's credit, the security queues at Hong Kong are generally very quick and takes less than 5 minutes even at the busiest hours. Despite this, priority security is standard with business tickets on most other airlines, especially at their bases, and the omission inveitably tarnishes the exclusive luxurious experiance that is expected with Cathay. Because of this, points are deducted with Hong Kong airport.

Nonetheless, there was no signifigant queue at security, and as a Hong Kong Resident, my face data is already provided to the airport, and hence boarding passes is made mostly redundent throughout my whole journey through the airport. The entire process from check in to airside took less than 10 minutes.

Lounge 1/2 - Qantas Hong Kong Lounge

The best thing about flying premium with Oneworld is that they have no problem with lounge hopping, and thats excactly what i intend to do on both legs of my trip!

Being right next to the immigration hall at the North side of terminal 1, I headed on over to the Qantas Hong Kong Lounge for a quick treat before heading to The Pier, Cathay's flagship lounge, later. In fact, this is not my first time in this lounge, despite it being my first time flying business. Why and How? I flown with Japan Airlines Premium Economy to Haneda in October 2023, which has the rare benefit of giving lounge access, even for premium economy passengers. However, unlike business class tickets, passengers flying premium economy with Japan Airlines must only use the designated lounge, which the Qantas at Hong Kong, and cannot access other Oneworld lounges with the boarding pass alone.

Qantas Lounge tends to be one of the more quiet lounges in Hong Kong. It's name to fame is the cheesecakes which tastes incredbly sweet and nice, despite being a little on the stickier side for a cheesecake. However, my favourite thing about the Qantas Lounge is how easy it is to spot planes from this lounge. Unlike The Wing on the opposite side of the terminal, the Northern piers at Hong Kong tend to feature quicker turnaround and more varied traffic, whereas the Southern pier tends to handle longer-haul flights to Europe and North America. Because of this, it is a nicer hangout for planespotters who likes seeing planes move. Moreover, you get to see the newly constructed SkyBridge which it itself a sight to behold.

Lounge 2/2 - Cathay Pacific The Pier

Now, this is where the fun begins. The Pier is Cathay's Flagship Lounge (for now). Situated at the far end of Hong Kong airport, it features multiple sections of foods and drinks and is generally a very comfortable place to be in. Unlike many other lounges, Cathay welcomes any guest with access to the lounge without time limitation, and therefore if you have a nighttime flight, you are welcomed to come in the morning and just spend your day at the airport.

I was greeted with friendly staff who scanned my boarding pass to verify my eligibility and welcomed me to the lounge (You can use your lounge invite, but i was keeping that as a keepsake, you can always use your BP to access lounges). Intrestingly, accessing lounges is perhaps the only few time where you will need your BP when going through HK airport, the others situations that comes to mind would be when security stops you, when you travel with special needs, and when using one of the gates not yet equipped, currently only used by few local airlines like Hong Kong Airlines and Hong Kong Express.

I apologize for the lack of ambient photos inside the lounge, as i was too distracted and being amazed with the selection. I can assure you that the videos you see online of this lounge is as comfortable as they portray it to be, and my lack of photos hopefully rubs that point in. Anyhow, I got some food, a tray of tea, and Cathay's signature drink - Cathay Delight. Despite being seperated into zones, you are allowed to take food from one zone to another, except to the reading corner Cathay's calls the Beurau. 

The Lounge has some quiet and some noisier areas, which comes as no suprise owing to the lounge's diversity, and gives passengers choices on where they want to sit depending on what they wish to do. If i had to complain about this lounge tho, it would be this - It is way too far from the gates near the immigration hall. This is Cathay's flagship lounge, most people will be heading here using the one way people mover, yet because of how the airport is laid out, there is no easy way to head back to the low-numbered gates, which is a 20 minute walk away from the lounge.

Boarding and Departure

Boarding start not long after we reached the gates, which luckily wasn't too far from the Lounge due to a last minute gate change. The boarding was done in order of priority, with first class, business class, premium economy, and finally, economy. Todays aircraft is the 7.58 years old B-LRI and features 280 seats - 38 in business, 28 in premium economy and 214 in economy. Boarding commenced a little later than expected and i anticipate a mild ground delay because of that.

Today's seat is a standard Cathay Cirrus II found across their long haul fleets. Cathay is notorious for their dated recliner-style business class products, which does not offer the same privacy and direct aisle access expected of a modern business class. The recliners are not inherently uncomfortable but is often sold at the same price as their lie-flat counterparts, making it extremely infurating when ending up in one. Cathay also has an habbit of equipment changes which makes avoiding these recliners nearly impossible. The A350 is Cathay's most consistant fleet, as all aircrafts features the same hard products and layout, and so if you are so lucky to fly on one, you are guarenteed a lie-flat seat.

I will be sitting at 18A, the last window seat of business class that is not classed as a priority seat. Cathay marks certain seats as priority seats, which occasionally gets used for special need passengers. The seats are physically the same but is located at an more accessible position near the doors and hence, picking these seats has a mildly higher chance of a seat swap when necessary. As my seat was nearer to the second set of doors, I boarded from the economy jetbridge and sat down at my seat. It is unclear to me if they simply did not expect business passenger to be boarding from the second door (even if theres still a mini business cabin behind the second door), but I was slightly ignored for a good few minutes before being given welcome drinks.

There is a bottle of evian, a menu and a wine list waiting at my seat. The welcome drinks did eventually arrive along with hot towels (a bit too hot) and Naturally, when given the choice between Cathay Delight and Champagne, i picked the former (and also on account of being non-alcaholic). I settled into my seat and enjoy observing the last few passengers boarding as my seat features a great view of both jetways. As expected with these kinds of business seats, there was plenty of room, privacy and padding for comfort. I did a quick test of my seat and found the side padding slightly jammed but still functional. While the seat was comfortable, it did felt a little old and undermaintained, as scratches and discolouration can be found at every surface of the seat.

At this point, once refueling was complete and doors shut, we are on our way, 19 minutes behind schedule. Cathay's safety video at the time was effective and utilitarian, although a new one has been since released featuring Hong Kong, although I do think it distracts passenger's attention from the important safety information. Departure taxi at Hong Kong was relatively quick, quicker than the flight attendents who were taking orders and hence, being on a redemption ticket and without status and therefore one of the last in line to pick a meal, my meal choice was not set until well after takeoff.

Onboard Service

Departing from 3pm, a refreshment service was served on board this flight. I boarded the flight with a very full stomach from the lounge so I am not going to have a lot of space for what comes next. The whole meal service was nicely done in courses not long after take off. In classical Cathay fashion, a quick salad was provided first, alongside a drink, again, Cathay Delight for me. For the mains, there was three to pick from. Steamed Halibut, Beef Tenderloin and Chicken Curry. I picked the Beef Tenderloin as I am not a fan of seafood nor curry, I believe the options at this point was still rather plentiful and you are likely to get what you want for your main.

The purser came around with some bread, garlic bread it is for me! and my main came not long after, along with a cup of Hot Chocolate. The beef was ever so slighly overcooked but was delish nonetheless. Suprisingly, the veggies blown me away in terms of flavour, texture and how well it tasted. I could go as far as to say that it tasted nicer than the beef itself. Well done Cathay Dining on this front. 

Following my enviable but painfully slow process of eating more food, i am greeted with cheese and Haagen Dazs ice cream. As they said, you have a second stomach for dessert, and even tho i downed multiple cups of ice cream at the lounge already, i can still fit one more in.

The cabin crew was very nice and efficient throughout the service and it was done very quickly. Although, the entire process felt a little too chaotic and it would not be a problem if the cabin crew took a bit more time and done so a little slower so the passengers doesn't get overwhelmed or stressed about progressing through the courses.

I adjusted my seat to a comfortable zero-g style position and took out my laptop after the meal service concluded. At this point, i was hit with bad news - They ran out of Cathay Delight. In retrospect, it appears that this happens fairly often as the drink is prepared ahead of time by the crew before the meal service. However, I do believe that it is necessary to consider a little more overhead, as it is quite ironic for an airline to run out of it's signature drink this early into the flight.

Bad news aside, business passengers gets access to Cathay's onboard wifi service provided by Panasonic. While it is not as quick as Starlink, i found the wifi to be perfectly quick for most task, including watching YouTube at 1080p, messaging and video confrencing. However, no matter how hard I try, I couldnt get discord to connect, leaving me without online friends for four hours. Intrestingly, If your phone has the ability to do hotspot through wifi, you may share this network connection with your other device, which is what i did by sharing my phones connection with my Macbook.

Landing and Arrival

Business class flights never feel like they last very long once you fly enough on them. This is something i will continue to notice over the course of more business flight after this one. yet, our flight was kinda long as the aircraft circled near singapore for a good half an hour before actually landing. Despite departing late, we landed at Singapore Changi airport ahead of schedule, and taxied to the new and very beautifully designed T4 at Changi. 

Business disembarked the aircraft first and we were at immigration in no time. Singapore now uses automated gates for all travellers, which does have the unfortunate and extremely infurating consequence of not producing a passport stamp or even a physical proof of entry. I strongly recommend against travelling to singapore for a once-in-a-lifetime trip because you will not have a momento on your passport after the trip. Of course, having a long line of automated gates does mean that there is no queue for immigration, which is the only upside. 

By the time we reached baggage claim, my bags are already out. This is rediculously efficient as it took less than 15 minutes to get from the gate to the reclaim.