Trip Report: Cathay Pacific A330-300 Economy Class Shanghai (SHA) - Hong Kong (HKG)
I was quite looking forward to flying Cathay Pacific from Shanghai Hongqiao airport to Hong Kong. I’d flown this route before on China Eastern and Juneyao Air, and also flown from Shanghai to Shenzhen, nearby Hong Kong, on Shenzhen Airlines and Xiamen Airlines. Cathay Pacific has had a premium image, so I was keen to try it!
Today’s flight CX349 was operated by an Airbus A330-300.
Business Class had full lie-flat beds, and some attractively lit art on the wall.
Economy was in a standard 2-4-2 configuration, and each seat had a video monitor.
The flight time was only 2 hours 15 minutes, but we had a full meal service, similar to other carriers on this route. The meal choices were chicken with potatoes and pork with rice. I was seated in row 70 near the back; they ran out of the chicken by the time they got to my row, but I would have chosen the pork anyway.
It was a really nice meal! The bread was individually distributed from a bread basket, and served warm. It smelled and tasted like a freshly baked roll, rather than the packaged rolls that sometimes seem to prioritize shelf stableness over taste. I also had hot Chinese tea with my meal.
Notice the metal cutlery!
The pork was pork belly braised until tender, with bamboo shoots. The fat was melty enough that I could easily cut off those layers. Perhaps the bright red color was due to flavoring from preserved bean curd? I’ll have to check that up.
A very nice treat was the Haagen Dazs strawberries and cream ice cream. I read the ingredients: very few ingredients in all, and all natural! Haagen Dazs is very premium in China: a small cup like this would cost about US$5.
After lunch, they passed around with drinks while collecting the trays, but coffee wasn’t on the cart. When I asked for coffee, the flight attendant happily obliged, wrote down my seat number, and came back a bit later with the coffee.
All in all, I found Cathay Pacific to definitely be a cut above the domestic Chinese carriers. Across the board, I find the flight attendants to be courteous and professional. But where Cathay Pacific rose above was in the lunch service, which seemed to be prepared with care, didn’t involve a lot of pre-packaged food, and had upscale touches like Haagen Dazs ice cream and metal cutlery (Chinese airlines sometimes leave me to eat with just a plastic spork). The seatback monitors with a big movie and TV selection was also nice. And subtly in the background, I think their overall branding is more sophisticated and consistent than their competition on the route.
