Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific are regularly rated one of the best airlines in the world and are one of my favourite airlines. Though in recent years they’ve been struggling. Based in Hong Kong they are one of the airlines hit hardest by the pandemic. Hong Kong only fully reopened this year and flights are still well below pre-pandemic levels.

This slight decline can be seen in the latest Skytrax Airline Rankings which rates them a 8th best airline in the world. Obviously that’s still great, but not quite as good as their 4th place in 2019 and 1st place in 2014. However, in my experience Cathay Pacific have been consistently excellent. I’ve now flown 5 separate flights with them, four in business class and this one in economy. Whilst the Business class is unsurprisingly great, I was also pleasantly surprised by the Cathay Pacific Economy experience I had today.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) is pretty impressive, serving 60 million passengers at its peak in 2018. It has two terminals. Terminal 1 (where I was today) is used by Malaysia Airlines and most other large international airlines like Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad etc. Meanwhile Terminal 2 is used by budget airlines, mostly Air Asia.

Terminal 1 is made up of the main terminal buildings used for smaller planes, plus a satellite terminal used for long haul planes. The two buildings are usually connected by a train, but currently it’s being upgraded so is closed. Instead you need to catch a shuttle bus which runs every few minutes. It’s a bit less convenient, but only takes a few minutes (and some walking) extra.

Overall the airport seemed functional enough. To enter you need to pass through border control, which took about 10 minutes for us as it was relatively quiet. However, when we landed at Kuala Lumpur the week before it took 1.5 hours. So immigration queues are probably the major issue at this airport, I would factor in some extra time next time just in case. Once past immigration you’re into the main terminal building and from there it’s a short walk to catch a bus to the satellite building. Throughout the airport I was surprised at the lack of restaurants and shops. There’s really not much to do here, and clearly there are spaces for more shops and restaurants, they’re just mostly empty. This might be an aftereffect of Covid though as aviation in South East Asia still hasn’t quite recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

The Plane

Today we were flying on a 22.4 year old Airbus A330-300. Cathay Pacific have 42 of these in their fleet and their mostly used for medium haul & high demand routes like the one today. They have several configurations of the A330, some with the newer lay flat Business seats and Premium Economy. Our plane was one of the older configurations (33P) though and just 24 Business seats and a whopping 293 Economy seats.

The A330 is actually one of my favourite planes to fly in economy class thanks to its 2-4-2 layout. This means there are no middle seats on the window aisles. Which is especially good if you’re travelling as a couple as you can have two seats to yourself without a 3rd person sitting next to you. It’s also great if you like sitting by the window as you only have one person between you and the aisle instead of two.

The Seat

The Cathay Pacific Economy seat in their Airbus A330-300 is probably one of the best I’ve sat in. Especially for a short flight. In fact, my next flight was 14 hours on a British Airways Boeing 787-9 to London, and that seat was much less comfortable.

The seats are extremely well padded with good legroom. There’s an adjustable headrest with good firm sides. They even provide a pillow and blanket on this short flight. On the seat back you’ll find one large pocket and 3 smaller ones for all your storage needs. Just below the screen there’s another storage tray perfect for phones. The seat has a folding tray table that also has a cup holder when the tray is fully folded. And lastly, there’s a USB charging port underneath the screen. Plus a universal power plug underneath the seat.

Another great thing about Cathay’s A330 is that every seat has a tv. Another thing it’s rare to see on short haul flights in Europe. The screen is a bit small, but has a wide range of both Western and Asian media. The user interface also feels nice and modern making it easy to use and find things to watch. I was expecially please to see they have a whole category for HBO shows, so I binged The Last of Us for the entire flight.

Food

Cathay Pacific Economy food was also very good for a short haul flight. Coming from Europe where you’d be lucky to get a free bottle of water on a flight of this length, the full meal service is much appreciated. The choice was chicken and rice, or beef and rice. I went for chicken and rice which had spicy chicken skewers and chicken fried rice underneath. It tasted good, though I feel like they reduced the portion of veg and gave a double portion of chicken.

The fruit bowl (pineapple, watermelon and dragon fruit) was fresh. And for dessert there was strawberry Häagen-Dazs ice cream. A bread roll an butter were on the side. And you have a choice of drink (including alcoholic) though I just went for orange juice and water.

Service & Other Stuff

In my experience Cathay Pacific cabin crew have always been great. Previously I’ve flown from London to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to Tokyo with them in Business Class. The London to Hong Kong leg especially was one of my best flights ever. The seat, food and service are amazing. The cabin crew even addressed me by my name throughout the flight, despite me never telling them. Whilst service isn’t quite as extravagent in economy, it was still good. And flight attendants were very attentive, handing out extra pillows to people and stuff like that. Some of the excellent service could be because of how empty the flight was, which does make it easier for more personal service.

Now as I mentioned early, this flight was delayed by about 35 minutes due to bad weather in Hong Kong. That’s unnavoidable in tropical regions like this so I don’t really blame Cathay Pacific. However, it did cause me to miss my connecting British Airways flight to London. Which was a whole other issue. I’ll discuss it more in my upcoming British Airways 787-9 Economy review.

For now though, I want to praise how great all the Cathay Pacific staff were about helping connecting passengers in an effort not to miss their flights. Firstly, when we landed they let us go to the front of the cabin so we could disembark first (for economy passengers at least). The very helpful head flight attendant also came to each passenger with a tight connection and explained the process. Then gave his best assurances everything would be ok. Of course, we still missed it, but it was nice he made the effort.

Once we reached the airport terminal another helpful attendant literally ran accross the airport with us to show us to our connecting flight. He wasn’t even out of breath whilst I was panting. So 10/10 for Cathay Pacific service both on and off the plane.

I will add one caveat though. Cathay Pacific did recently have a scandal where some cabin crew were found to be discriminating against non-English speaking passengers. The airline has taken a pretty strong stance against eliminating this problem. But the fact it has happened does slightly bring into question the overal attitudes of some cabin crew.

Final Thoughts

Overall this was probably the best 4 hour Economy flight of my flight. With one very big caveat that I’m ignoring the 35 min delay as it was outside of Cathay Pacific’s control. The Cathay Pacific Economy seat is super comfy with lots of legroom. The meal service was good. The IFE system had loads of good movies from all over the world in multiple languages. And service was top notch, especially regarding how they dealt with connecting passengers. Even small things like handing out pillows and blankets on a 4 hour flight really elevated the experience.

Generally Cathay Pacific are one of the more expensive airlines in this region, but I bought this as part of a connecting ticket to London, which made it surprisingly good value. At least when I booked, the connecting flight from Kuala Lumpur to London via Hong Kong cost the same as just Hong Kong to London. That’s airline economics for you.

More from me…

For other flight reviews to compare against Cathay Pacific Economy:

• Malaysia Airlines Economy A350-900 – Great food on a 13 hour flight
• Singapore Airlines Fantastic Regional Business – Saigon to Singapore on a 787-10
• Singapore Airlines Economy from London to Singapore – As Good as People Say?

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• The Platinum Card – You Receive 50,000 Membership Reward points after spending £6,000 in the first 6 months:  https://americanexpress.com/en-gb/referral/fREDEGgRA5?CPID=100493012
• British Airways Card: You Receive 8,000 Avios after spending £1,000 in the first 3 months: https://americanexpress.com/en-gb/referral/fREDEG42lN?CPID=100503089