You guys. I’ve been saving up all my miles/Avios for this moment. 4 years ago, I flew economy from DFW to HKG and had one of those Scarlett O’Hara “I’ll never be hungry again!” moments where I decided then and there to never fly economy to Asia again. Happy to say I stayed true to my word and offloaded a shit ton of miles for this moment. Worth it? Let’s review.

Check In

I flew with my brother on the same flight but he wasn’t in biz with me. Whoops. We had no wait in the priority line and the check in people were nice enough to send my luggage all the way through to Bangkok even though I had two separate itineraries (one was the biz class to HKG, the other was a separate economy ticket I purchased to BKK). My brother, who didn’t have status, also didn’t have a seat on his overbooked HKG to BKK flight and was STRESSED. I did my best to wave around my status for help and they assured us he would be fine before sending us on our merry way to the lounge.

Lounge

Since Cathay Pacific doesn’t have its own lounge, they use the British Airways lounge at B40. This is a “meh” experience since the flight is so late… the bar is closed, the restaurant is closed (you can’t even get into the restaurant unless you’re actually flying Business class on BA). So all you can really do is grab a beer or some wine, some small premade sandwiches, and steal as many bags of crisps as you can.

Boarding

FYI the gate is REALLY FAR from the lounge. Like a 15-20 minute walk. By the time we got there, economy had already started boarding and they didn’t do much to stop them and let us board from the priority lane. Not a huge deal to me, but if you care about that stuff just know that it happens.

My Seat

I was in 16K for the flight. For some reason the rows start at number 11, and I chose mine based on seat guru because I guess the 2 in front of me have a misaligned window.

The seat itself was nice enough, the Airbus A350-900 (was supposed to be the A350-1000 but I guess not enough people were flying the route to justify the newer version) is set up in a 1-2-1 formation and offers so much privacy.

The TV was quite large and I enjoyed not having to stow it for take-off or landing. They had a side container for noise cancelling headphones that worked with the TV, and I thought it was weird that when they’re in use you have to keep the door open because of how it’s wired. It was large enough for me to store a book and a few other things.

Around-seat-storage was otherwise limited to a small area under the window. I fit my purse, toiletries, sweater, headphones, and shoes but had little room for other things.

The blanket was wrapped in plastic and was fresh but I’ve had better quality on other airlines (BA – a nice down quilt, Qatar – basically a full effing bed. Plush pillows on both.) The pillow here wasn’t wrapped, just sitting on my seat, smaller than others I’ve had, and simply OK.

What was missing from my seat? An AMENITY KIT and Pajamas. Alright, so pajamas are a given on some Middle Eastern airlines and usually a first class perk for the others, but since there is no first class on this flight it would be nice to have PJs. The more shocking omission was no amenity kit. Seriously? I got an amenity kit on some economy flights. Could’ve really used some lip balm. And lotion. And socks. (Apparently socks are available upon request, so I do applaud the sustainability. Only found this out by reading fine print in the magazine). No turn down service or seat cover.

The moral of the story here is that once you’ve flown business on Qatar every other business class experience sucks. Even BA has a better product.

My brother had an entire row to himself in economy since the flight wasn’t full and had ramen on demand. He was able to lie flat and sleep, watch the same great selection of movies, and his ticket price was cheap. I’d say for economy, he was the real winner.

Food

The menu was nice and I love love loved the warm quinoa salad I had on request mid flight. What was weird is that they had this beef noodle dish listed as a dinner and as an on-demand meal and they ran out of it before the flight even began. That was the ONLY dish I wanted and I was denied every time I asked for it. I would assume that on-demand dishes should be plentiful, otherwise don’t make it on-demand. Rant over.

There are a few breakfast options (western, Chinese, etc)… and a good wine list. I got enough champagne to distract myself from the hanger of no beef noodles, but not enough to be absolutely sloshed. Life is about balance.

There was also on demand ice-cream which I enjoyed.

In Flight Service/Entertainment

Usually when I fly to Asia I deprive myself of movies for months. I wasn’t disappointed… they had Bohemian Rhapsody (SO GOOD Rami Malek deserved every award), and I also watched Instant Family which made me silently weep for the entire duration of the movie. They also had the RBG movie which my dad watched a few days later.

The staff gave me plenty of warm towels which I appreciated. I did find it curious that when I wanted someone nobody was around, but then when I had my food and wanted to eat slowly they wouldn’t stop checking in on me and trying to take it away. I had to swat them away from my food and it was pretty embarrassing while I was watching Instant Family and sobbing to be like “don’t take my food away!” Lol.

Quick note on bathrooms: Very clean, had seat covers, and there is even a window for you to look out while you do your business hahaha. We flew in darkness the entire flight though, so not much to see.

They offered in flight WiFi for $20 and the service was pretty good. You can change devices as long as both aren’t tethered at the same time. No service above the Arctic circle though.

Flight Itself

We flew north, then further north, and as north as you could go until suddenly you fly so north you’re going south. We went really close to the north pole, and my brother mentioned that he could see the split of daytime and nighttime on the globe from either side of the world. Wish I was awake for that. By the time we arrived, we had flown through only Canada, Greenland, Russia, Mongolia, and China. We landed a bit early at 4:45am, just in time to hit up the Wing lounge as it opened at 5am. Not too much turbulence.

As soon as we got off the plane, my brother was met by some attendants as he was originally stand-by for our next flight, and they had a boarding pass and seat ready for him. Yay.

Final grade: C+ as far as business class goes. A- for economy. I was happy I didn’t pay for this flight since the price when I checked was around $8000 roundtrip… definitely not worth it. Stick to the $700-$900 economy roundtrip and pray the flight has some empty rows!