hello my name is Paul Stewart and I'm in Hong Kong International Airport and
this evening I'm flying back to Sydney with Cathay Pacific in their business
class product. Now I could have selected from two different aircraft for this
trip - the first fight was an A330 and the second flight was a Boeing 777
so obviously I went with the second one because it looks better, so coming up is
Cathay 777 business class. Hong Kong is one of my favourite airports, in part
because of the number of and diversity of the lounges. They're spread all over
the airport so if you know what gate you are using it's an idea to find a map and
then go to the nearest lounge. As I had a six-hour layover I visited a few of them
so I'll show you around them although I've uploaded a separate 12 minute video
where I'll walk you through all of the business and first class lounges and
I'll include a link to that below. There's a train that runs the length of
the main terminal although I really need to stress that it only operates in one
direction so if you, like I did, and want to head back to the Qantas or The Wing
lounges, you'll need to walk back although there are those travelotor
which makes it fairly painless. The bridge is the first lounge I visited
and it's split into two long sections with plenty of seating overlooking the
airport apron. Down one end is a barista making coffee and as I hadn't slept a
lot the previous night, as I was on a flight from Helsinki, I was keen for a
coffee and a light snack.
I then wandered up the other end of the lounge where there was a bar where I had
another cup of coffee... mostly, and enjoyed this view of a Cathay A350
There's also a large buffet which is
really impressive and more seating and tables.
I really can't understate how impressed I am with the cafe lounges and the fact
that they are located all around the airport means that you really don't need
to walk far for your aircraft. Next up was a very brief visit to the pier which
has similar amenities but with a very different style although there's still
the great view. I was keen to visit the Qantas lounge
although it's located back near the entrance so we went for a walk. This
airport offers fantastic views for aviation nerds including this Airbus
A340-600 which was actually the longest airliner in the world until the latest
stretched 747-8 was launched. The A340s are being phased out and
replaced by more efficient big twin such as the Boeing 777 which you can see
now unfortunately for Airbus, engine technology just wasn't quite there back
when A340 was under development so they still needed four but only a few
years later, General Electric, Rolls and Pratt & Whitney released new engines
which allowed Boeing to design a large airliner powered by only two of them
This 777 is the aircraft type flying me to Sydney this evening and for
interest sake is painted in the new Cathay livery.
Tow here's the old livery and you'll notice the darker green and red bits at
the front as well as the tail have been replaced by a simpler and cleaner design.
Either looked fine although I think the new one does seem more modern. Next
up is the Qantas lounge which is open to all business class passengers traveling
on any One World airline. As I said before it's literally right after
security. It's a much more open design than the other two lounges that I've
shown you so it can be noisier although I personally don't mind the airport
ambience.
There's a bar and plenty of seating overlooking the terminal and a partial
view of the airport apron. I had this braised beef and brisket
egg noodle soup and another coffee and ended up just relaxing here for a few
hours, and had a shower. Access to a clean shower, especially after 24 hours of
flying really has to be one of the biggest perks of business class
especially when you're flying through a hot and sticky climate such as Hong
Kong in September, and of course there's a decent buffet available throughout the
day. It was time for another coffee followed by some attempts at being
artistic, as my Instagram followers may have noticed, and then more relaxing
before the flight. By the way I'm also on Facebook so please search for Paul Stewart Aviation and join the growing aviation community.
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whenever I upload a new video. It was finally time to board, and as you have
now learned, my aircraft was painted in the old livery. While some of their
777 have a first-class cabin, this one doesn't and business class is
divided into two cabins with my seat 21k being in the second smaller cabin. The
seats are all in a 1-2-1 layout which now is the industry norm and
obviously means that every seat has all access.
For those traveling as a couple the middle seats are fine although just be
aware that there's no privacy divider other than opening the door on the
storage compartment as you can see now. Unfortunately my camera really struggled
in the light although I'll try and show you through what is otherwise a really,
really good seat. To your side is an adjustable armrest and below that is a
storage spot for your shoes. In front of you is a TV screen which I'll comment more
on later, and below that is a huge foot recess. A lot of new business class seats
have really narrow foot recesses although this was massive and it really
helped as I usually like to flex my knees a little when I sleep. There's
another storage spot and above that is a fold-out table which you can escape from
during the meal service if you need to.
You've got this storage compartment with a noise cancelling headphones, an amenity
kit and water bottle all hidden inside.
The inside of the door itself also has a mirror on it
which is useful and I've continued my tour on to the adjustable reading lamp
seat adjustment buttons and several different power ports
and just above those, or next to them, is the remote for the in-flight
entertainment if you don't want to use the touchscreen. Above you are reading
lamps although unfortunately there's no individual air vents but at least
there's an impressive view of the wing and engine. Now I just want to point out
again how large the ledges at your feet are. My bag is fairly large yet it was able to
almost disappear underneath it. Here's the amenity kit and it was perfectly
fine and I'll be giving this away to a subscriber with more details of that
later in the video.
A welcome drink was bought around and this was called the oriental breeze
which was a sour plum tea cranberry juice and a few other things and tasted
great. Now I'll mention the in-flight entertainment quickly. The touch
responsiveness was okay and the image quality was perfectly fine. There was a
good amount of English content which was a relief as I had just flown with
Finnair and their content was lacking. Unfortunately there were around five
minutes of ads before each movie, and yes I did time it, although you can
fast-forward them. Unfortunately you'll often end up overshooting and end up
having to rewind to the start of the movie so it's a bit of a pest. Of course
there's the in-flight map which I really enjoy looking at and some external
cameras including this view of the forward landing gear which I realized
afterwards probably pretty cool during takeoff and landing.
For comparison's sake check out my video of Cathay's First Class through to
London and I'll include a link to that in the video description below. Well it
was now time to depart although sadly my view wasn't great, in part because the
cabin lights weren't dimmed. I thought airlines are meant to dim the
cabin lights during takeoff and landing or maybe Cathay or Hong Kong have
different rules anyway comment below if you know the answer. At least the engine
sounded good!
After the initial climb I reclined my seat and watched a few documentaries.
There wasn't a round of drinks and about 60 minutes after takeoff dinner started
and I had this braised US. pork cutlet with preserved mustard greens, kai lan,
carrots and steamed jasmine rice which all tasted fine. The drink was a
Cathay signature called 'cloud 9' which is made up of vodka,
Cointreau, sprite and some lemon. For dessert, I had this black forest trifle
which also tasted great and then I sat back and watched some more movies.
Now I knew the sunrise was coming up in a few hours and I was keen to stay awake and
get some footage. I checked out the in-flight Wi-Fi although unfortunately
it's not free, even business passengers so I went back to watching movies.
Somewhere above Indonesia the first glimpses of light started reflecting off
the lower part of the engine cowling and then the light show began.
In the distance now you can see the Australian coastline which I believe was
the Northern Territory and since I had got the sunrise footage that I wanted, I
went to bed. I was woken by the flight deck asking the crew to prepare the
cabin for landing which was a surprise as I had requested that I be woken for
the breakfast service and this highlighted my only real criticism of
what was actually a very good business class product - service. While both my
primary flight attendant and customer service manager did come and introduce
themselves, it was rushed and seemed forced. My primary flight attendant didn't
make eye contact and when she came around later to get my meal orders she
pushed the iPad in front of my face as I leant across to pick up my menu. I had
already decided what I wanted to order but I just needed to look at the menu to
remind myself or the name of the food. The lack of a round of drinks was odd
although I suppose I can understand if they just want to get the meal service
done quickly as possible since it was a midnight departure but then that wasn't
particularly fast either and later on when I wanted to watch the moon's glow
out of the window as well as the Southeast Asian islands all lit up with
lights, she came through and pushed the slide down. A simple request to lower the
blind might have been more reasonable I thought, and then to top it off not
waking me for breakfast even though I'd specifically requested to be woken was
pretty disappointing. In fact I even brought chocolates for the crew but I
was so disappointed with the service that I kept them for myself and I'm
literally eating some of them as ahead of this video. So that's another down
mark for Cathay, you're making me fat. So that's the negatives over and frankly
not getting a breakfast is quite a significant one,
but I'll move on with the positives. I really think that the seat itself is
fantastic. It's really spacious and while it doesn't have the doors of a few other
Business Suites, it's still fairly private. There's quite a few storage
spots and the legroom is really, really massive. while most airlines have moved
away from the older 2-2-2 layout, the one advantage of the older style was
heaps of legroom and lots of the newer seats have narrow foot recesses so when
you're trying to sleep you're locked in tight. You can't see it in my footage that
well because it's pretty dark but there really was a lot of leg room
and I was able to have a really good, but short, sleep. The in-flight entertainment
was perfectly fine as was the food and drinks, minus there being no breakfast.
The menus, which I'll show in full at the end of the video, had been changed to
this new weird newspaper style which was unique... The airport experience itself was
great with fantastic lounges so really it's just a pity that the service wasn't
as good as everything else. And finally my amenity kit giveaway. It's
open to anyone so just make sure you comment below including the text (Cathay
Amenity kit) in brackets make sure you like the video and make sure that you're
subscribed. After one month I'll select a winner and mail out the kit. Now make
sure you keep a close eyes on my social media accounts for details of the
winners as a few previous giveaways have gone unclaimed. If you enjoyed the video
please give it a thumbs up and check out my channel for more similar videos. Don't
forget to subscribe and check out my Instagram and Facebook pages. Thanks for
watching and I'll see you in the next video where hopefully I'll get breakfast!!