Cathay Pacific to the Fragrant Harbour (SIN-HKG)

[ycp81]

Again, I embarked on another public holiday trip within the span of a month, with an additional 1.5days of vacation leave, for a 4 nights trip to Hong Kong. Having been to Hong Kong a number of times, I am rather familiar with the city and hence this trip would be to seek out new eating places and maybe explore some unexplored places. Tickets were booked more than half a year back and CX actually offered the lowest fares (less than S$300 return, lower than the budget carriers!) over the holiday period, hence it was definitely a great deal!

Checked in at Terminal One slightly more than an hour before the late afternoon departure to HKG. Even though with the totally full flight, check-in counters were rather empty, with 9 counters opened to check in passengers! Additionally, I observed that at the Business Class counters, the check-in staff will stand up and greet/welcome Business passengers prior processing their check-in. Very premium service by CX!




Boarding pass. Would be stuck at the middle aisle seat as the flight was totally full with no choice of window seats available during online check-in. Also the flight was changed from a originally scheduled B772 to a long-haul B773ER. Guess CX's frequent flyers would have enjoyed an upgrade to Premium Economy, with Business Class pax upgraded from Regional J to Long-haul J. Makes their loyal pax happy with the "upgrades" I guess.




Nothing much interesting in the afternoon, except some European heavies.




Spotted a Hello Kitty EVA B773ER at the Terminal 3 gate (B10?) nearest to Terminal 1.




We would be departing from Gate D34. CX has 2 separate security screening queues for premium and economy pax. Boarding has already commenced when I reached the gate. CX has also segregated a section of the gate for its premium pax for priority boarding vs the rest of cattle class. From the looks of it, seems like half the plane are CX's premium frequent flyer members.





23 September 2015
Cathay Pacific
CX 734
Singapore (SIN) - Hong Kong (HKG)
B777-300ER
B-KPY
Economy Class
Flight Time: 3h27m


A fairly young 3-year old B-KPY would be operating the flight.






Boarding the plane. An empty newspaper trolley was at the door, presumably with all newspapers being snatched up by earlier boarding passengers.




Boarding in progress for a totally full flight.




Legroom was more than decent for the short flight. As mentioned before on by previous CX reviews, the new long-.haul economy seat is also very well-padded and comfortable




Inflight magazines and safety card.




Headphones were pre-set on each seat. However, pillows and blankets were only available upon request. With many of the passengers requesting for blankets, crew had to go back and forth the galley to retrieve blankets for passengers. Cost-cutting here?

[ycp81]

We pushed back slightly behind schedule and the animated safety video was played.




Taxi to the runway. Having no window seat, I could only watch the front camera view from the IFE screen.




Took off from Rwy20C for the 3hrs hop to HKG. See the front camera view below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxVmRvT7kXc


Flight map shortly after takeoff.




Started watching the animation movie "Inside Out", which coincidentally was just being shown in Singapore cinemas as well.




Service started with a beverage service and peanuts. Drinks were served from trays, with a selection of juices, coke and water. From what I can tell, cabin crew on this flight were all HKG-based. Though efficient and professional, a few seemingly newbies seemed flustered with the full passenger load.




Crew preparing for dinner service.




Dinner is served. No menus are handed out and the choices were informed verbally by the crew. This evening, we would have a choice of Fish with penne pasta or Chicken with fried rice.




Meal tray which came with cut fruits and a warm roll with butter. I had a Coke Zero and water to go along.




Fried fish with penne pasta and vegetables. This was not too bad and portion was rather big.






The other choice was Chicken with egg fried rice, which was flavourful and delicious!




Dessert was a Haagen Daz strawberry ice-cream, which I totally enjoyed. Overall, quite a good meal on CX.

[ycp81]

Ending the meal with a cup of coffee, served in a Chinese tea cup haha.




More than halfway there after I am done with the meal and movie.




Lavatory view. Hand and face moisturisers are available.




Cabin view. Even with the full load, it was still very spacious and comfortable. 3-3-3 in economy in 777s are still the best, comfort wise!




Grabbed a view of the setting sun from the rear door window.




Spent the rest of the flight fiddling exploring through the choices of the IFE system (lots of short programmes and TV series!). SQ's Krisworld may win in the choice of movies, but CX Studio definitely has much more short TV series, offering almost whole seasons in some cases.


Very soon, we were approaching and landing into Hong Kong, right on schedule despite the late departure.




The entire flight path.




Thank you for flying Cathay Pacific.




View of the very comfortable economy seats during disembarking.




Passing the Premium Economy cabin.




Despite the full flight, it was certainly a very comfortable journey to HKG on Cathay Pacific. Catering was good, service was much acceptable despite the full load and seats were great. What more can I ask for on the short flight at such low fares.


It was a rather long walk to immigration due to HKG airport's massive size, but there was totally no wait at immigration. A short wait for luggage and out of the airport to the city in no time!


Grabbed the first meal, a supper, at a recommended eatery, Macau Restaurant, near my hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. The egg tarts (not pictured) and crispy buns are very tasty, but the rest are just rather average.




Brunch the next day consisted of dim sum at an aptly named eatery, DimDimSum.

[ycp81]

Explore a new arty shopping place in Sheung ***, PMQ (short for Police Married Quarters). Interesting place to spend a couple of hours with shops emphasizing on art and design.




Chanced upon a roadside stall selling simple yet delicious tomato soup noodles. Go google "tomato noodles sheung ***". Apparently it is a rather famous stall!




Dinner at Chan Kee eatery at Mongkok, just a lane behind Langham Place. This eatery is famous for its roast goose. A must try!




Evening view of the Central district of Hong Kong Island.




A traditional HK breakfast at an eatery beside the hotel.




Doing something different on this trip, we visited Tai-O on Lantau Island. It is a simple traditional fishing village, one of its kind left in Hong Kong.






Followed by a 15min bus ride up to Ngong Ping village and the Big Buddha.






And an amazing 25min cable car ride across the hills down to Tung Chung, with HKIA in full view!




Very tasty dim sum dinner at One Dim Sum near Prince Edward. It is an ex-Michilin 1-star eatery.




Chee Kei Wonton Noodles at Causeway Bay. One of the better wonton noodle chains in Hong Kong.

[ycp81]

Another traditional breakfast at the Tsui Wah café chain. The buns are good!




And a very special Cheese noodles at Seng Kee eatery.





4 nights in Hong Kong and it was time to return. The day that I am flying back to SIN also coincides with the mid-autumn, or popularly known as the mooncake festival. It is a traditional festival widely celebrated in Hong Kong and China and hence it would be interesting if CX does anything special on the flight back.

Arrived at the airport by bus and obtained boarding pass with no wait slightly less than 1.5hr before departure. Today's gate would be real far!




Through immigration and security with hardly a wait as well and into the departure hall. Some spotting before hopping onto the train to the other end of the humongous terminal.






Took the shuttle train to arrive at the other end of the terminal. The shuttle train would soon be extended to a new satellite terminal which is currently in construction and operational by end of the year.




It would be another long walk to Gate 71, right at the end of the pier.




More plane-spotting along the way, including a LH B748!






Finally arrived at the gate, with boarding already commenced.




B-HLV, a 12-yr old but recently retrofitted A330-300 would be flying me back home.

[sqdazz]

Cut fruit... no thanks Cathay. Give me a proper starter. Cheap.

[ycp81]

27 September 2015
Cathay Pacific
CX 711
Hong Kong (HKG) - Singapore (SIN)
A330-300
B-HLV
Economy Class
Flight Time: 3h12m


Boarding the aircraft. Again, the newspaper trolley at the door was totally emptied by early boarding passengers.




Proceeded to my window seat at the second last row of the aircraft. This A330 was retrofitted with the earlier generation fixed-back shell seats in economy. Comfort-wise, definitely not up to par as the new long-haul seats, but acceptable for the short flight to Singapore. The cabin ended up totally full again on this flight. During check-in, the agent even commented that they were looking for passengers to volunteer for a later flight as the flight was overbooked. Well, I was not offered the option though. Also interestingly, I was initially surprised by the Singapore-accented English spoken by quite a number of the crew. Turned out that more than half the crew, including the Inflight Service Manager, are Singapore-based CX crew. The 3 crew working the aft economy cabin where I was seated (2 junior crew and a purser) are all Singapore-based crew, resulting in a more SQ-ish instead of CX-ish experience. Funny to actually feel at home on a CX flight haha.




Welcome aboard.




Legroom not fantastic but acceptable for the short flight.




Safety card. Rest of the inflight mags are similar to the previous flight.




At the gate.




We finally pushed back slightly behind schedule due to loading of connecting baggage. Safety video played.




Taxi to the runway.






Holding short beside a CX OneWorld-livery A340.




Rolling down Rwy25L.

[SINFJ]

Proceeded to my window seat at the second last row of the aircraft. This A330 was retrofitted with the earlier generation fixed-back shell seats in economy. Comfort-wise, definitely not up to par as the new long-haul seats, but acceptable for the short flight to Singapore. The cabin ended up totally full again on this flight. During check-in, the agent even commented that they were looking for passengers to volunteer for a later flight as the flight was overbooked. Well, I was not offered the option though. Also interestingly, I was initially surprised by the Singapore-accented English spoken by quite a number of the crew. Turned out that more than half the crew, including the Inflight Service Manager, are Singapore-based CX crew. The 3 crew working the aft economy cabin where I was seated (2 junior crew and a purser) are all Singapore-based crew, resulting in a more SQ-ish instead of CX-ish experience. Funny to actually feel at home on a CX flight haha.

CX 735 is operated by SIN based crew as well

[ycp81]

Climbing out of HKIA.




Tai-O can be spotted in the distance.




Video of departure from Rwy25L.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRe4c-zfyD0


Breaking through the clouds. Spot our shadow!




Climbing to cruising altitude.






Similar to the previous flight, service started with peanuts and beverages.




Chose the Coke with ice from the beverage tray to go along.




Was watching a Japanese comedy on the IFE when the meal choices of the flight popped out. For this flight's dinner choices, it was either Braised chicken in onion sauce with rice, or Fusilli in tomato sauce with black olives and cheese. As expected, one of the choices catered from HKG is a vegetarian pasta choice.




Dinner service started soon after. With the mainly Asian passengers onboard, the rice option was in high demand, resulting in some of the more "difficult" passengers (not stating the nationality here but freq flyers on CX's SIN-HKG flights will know) getting rather loud and demanding only for the rice option. Crew tried their best to appease passengers, and somehow managed to settle the situation amicably.




Seated at the rear, we were one of the last to be served and expecting to have no more rice option, we agreed for the pasta option, to much thanks from the very apologetic crew. The crew serving us also passed me a different tray from the rest (guess is a special meal tray which contains a dessert) and asked me to keep the dessert already on the tray. As part of the Mid-Autumn Festival treat, each meal tray also contained a mooncake as well! Had a white wine and orange juice to go along.




Cut fruits, a mango sago dessert and Haagen Daz cookies and cream ice-cream which was distributed shortly after. My sweet tooth was really satisfied on this flight!





Pasta dish. It was not really to my liking, as I am not really a fan of tomato-based pasta dishes and olives.

[ycp81]

Halfway through the meal, the purser popped out from the rear galley and passed us a rice option, mentioning that she has got one last casserole. Thanks to her! The chicken with rice tasted better than the pasta dish, but both options were not as good as the mains catered out from Singapore.




Finishing with ice-cream.




Complimentary mooncake for the mid-autumn festival.




Enjoying the mooncake with the full moon at 39,000ft and a cup of Chinese tea. Not everyday that one can have this experience!






Flying over Vietnam after meal trays were collected.




Sun setting and full moon getting brighter.




View of the cabin.




Towards the end of the flight, a few of us passengers were handed survey forms to fill up, and we got complimentary CX pens for it. After completing the survey, I asked if they have any playing cards but the purser informed apologetically that CX has ceased giving out playing cards. Another cost cutting measure...

Approaching Singapore.




We landed in a hazy Singapore Changi Rwy20R ahead of schedule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFhsqnsiUj4


Disembarking.






The aircraft will be overnighting in Singapore.




Again, it was a pleasant flying experience on CX on the short sector. Main course may not be as tasty as from Singapore, but the plentiful desserts and mooncake treat made up for it. Also, service by the Singapore-based CX crew were great (maybe we feel more comfortable interacting with the crew in Singlish aka Singapore-accented English). An above average flight on CX I would rate.

Thanks for reading and all comments are welcomed.

[SQ22]

Yet another great trip report by brother ycp81! Thank you and glad to see you enjoyed your trip!

[ycp81]

Yet another great trip report by brother ycp81! Thank you and glad to see you enjoyed your trip!

Thanks for reading!

[ycp81]

Cut fruit... no thanks Cathay. Give me a proper starter. Cheap.

I am all ok for a healthier fruit starter. Plus the tickets were really cheap, so no complaints

[dfs24]

Thanks for the report! I always thought of Cathay as a cheapo airline in both J and Y, especially regionally. The new regional J and fixed shell Y are bad, the catering I have always found to be quite poor. IFE selection not really extensive.

That being said, if you were on one of those sub 200 fares, then of course its worth it. Surprised they actually catered mooncakes.

[lingua101]

Very nice trip report. I guess we were at HK around the same time. I was there on 24-26 September also.

The dim sum at Prince Edward is the one that famous that open at 3am right?

Tai-O at Lantau Island looks nice. It is so unusual HK experience that I should do next time.

I did visit HKU campus. Quite nice campus in my opinion.

I also went to PMQ by accident as I wanted to try little bao which actually only open at night on Friday. I found that yellow round characters very cute also