Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - CX872 Scheduling Info

Why is it that starting on 12/15 CX872 to SFO will become a night flight(11:45pm departure) as oppose to being a day flight? Meanwhile it will go back to being a day flight(4:30pm departure) again in February. Does this have anything to do with aircraft availability/rotation for this temporary 2 month change to a nighttime departure? I personally like the daytime departure better as I can cope with the jet lag more effectively.

I suppose one of the reasons are related to the busy travel season between now and late January (Christmas and Chinese New Year). CX will add a number of extra flights (mainly within Asia) during this period. Scheduling 872 a night departure will make a better use of their aircrafts to make a return trip between HKG-BKK, HKG-TPE, and so on, instead of sitting in SFO for 8 hours or so before returning to HKG. This is just my guess... any CX employee here can give us the exact reason?

The same thing happened last year this time. Exactly from Dec 15 to sometime late Jan and Feb also.

There is a lot of SFO-India traffic on CX. I think the schedule of 872 is tied to the Mumbai and Delhi flights. I notice that the Delhi flights land at 9pm-ish in HKG for these days as opposed to sometime in the afternoon the rest of the year.

rejuvenated: Try this trick for jetlag if you are flying the night flight..... Force yourself to wake up by 2pm SFO time no matter what.

[This message has been edited by zhaobao (edited Dec 11, 2003).]