Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - YVR-HKG daytime becomes 343

This is just a personal whimper, but I just d/l'd the new planner and found that the afternoon YVR-HKG will be a 343 during the summer. They must anticipate slow business, given the changes in the OWE ticketing rules. Worse, my lovely connection to AKL has gone away. Now I'm stuck leaving on the 2AM flight and spending 13H in Hong Kong. Can't make a proper stop because of the "can't enter a continent twice" rule.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JohnAx:
This is just a personal whimper, but I just d/l'd the new planner and found that the afternoon YVR-HKG will be a 343 during the summer. They must anticipate slow business, given the changes in the OWE ticketing rules. Worse, my lovely connection to AKL has gone away. Now I'm stuck leaving on the 2AM flight and spending 13H in Hong Kong. Can't make a proper stop because of the "can't enter a continent twice" rule.</font>
13 hours in HKG is actually rather nice (esp. as it is daylight hours), and you get Wing/Pier access coming and going. Looks like the SFO/YVR equipment is being swapped (SFO becomes a 747 at the same time). I wondered where they got the extra 747s from (then I heard CX had 4-6 744s parked, depending on how you counted refitting activity).

Thanks for the pep talk. I was coming 'round to the same conclusion after the initial shock of seeing my well-planned trip disintegrate - perfect connections barely longer than mct all the way from YVR to Queenstown. I guess they just don't originate many sheep farmers out of Vancouver.

Did I get this right. The HKG-AKL route is being dropped? This would be a real shame for me if I'm travelling eastbound to visit my family there.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by michswiss:
Did I get this right. The HKG-AKL route is being dropped? This would be a real shame for me if I'm travelling eastbound to visit my family there.</font>
No, the HKG-AKL route is not being dropped (and in fact has not changed in any way, still the same plane and time). The complaint was that the inbound (YVR-HKG) now arrives 10+ hours earlier, making for a long connecting time ... this is due to a change in the YVR-HKG route.

Actually the whimper was that the afternoon flight YVR-HKG has become a 343, which being something of a flying elephant takes about 45 minutes longer and thus turns a beautiful 95-minute connection to AKL into a misconnect. (Hope the Sonic Cruiser gets off the ground - it should be quite a marketing tool on the long hauls.)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JohnAx:
Actually the whimper was that the afternoon flight YVR-HKG has become a 343, which being something of a flying elephant takes about 45 minutes longer and thus turns a beautiful 95-minute connection to AKL into a misconnect. (Hope the Sonic Cruiser gets off the ground - it should be quite a marketing tool on the long hauls.)</font>
I would take that flight, misconnect and get 23 hours in HKG as a free stopover. But then I like being in HKG. For what it's worth, my last A340 flight on CX was over an hour early (the winds did not seem unusual, my surmise is that the schedule is padded for the worst case and they are early 90% of the time) ... maybe enough to do an illegal connect, though it really depends on your fare basis and luggage situation.

IMHO, a day flight on a 343 beats a night flight on a 747. The better catering on day flights and the night arrival into HKG make the difference to me.

In J and Y classes, I think I would prefer the 343 in either case since it has fewer middle seats.

Sorry to be disagreeable, but even in CX F there's a world of difference between what they so nicely serve you, and a real meal in a real first-class restaurant.

The beds, while similarly handicapped in comparison to their land-based counterparts, are clearly a Divine Answer to long-distance transportation: they simultaneously erase 8 hours' tedium from the flight, and deliver me magic-carpet style half-way around the world, at least semi-bright-and-chipper and ready for a new day.

Frustrates the heck of of the CX FA's, though, who want so badly for everyone to enjoy all their offerings. Refuse a meal and they'll ask at least five times "Are you sure?" "Maybe just a salad?" "Can't I bring you *anything*?" Reminds me of my mom, bless 'em.

I'm taking this flight next month. What are the good seats in J class?