BearX220

This is the story of a family trip from the US to Australia many months in the making, a stellar 19 days made possible by FlyerTalk and AwardPlanner.

Planning

Nicki at AwardPlanner helped us redeem 480,000 British Airways Executive Club miles for three business class seats to Australia. We had flexible terms: we could leave from SEA or YVR, fly into SYD, BNE or MEL, and we’d take any two-to-three week window this summer. We could fly CX, QF or JL, but CX was our first choice. Working with BAEC, Nicki was able to score us CX seats YVR-HKG-SYD and back as long as one of us didn’t mind flying ahead and alone, on an immediately prior departure, on three of four segments. Done. Taxes came to about $870, which set us back a bit, but as the retail value of the flights totaled about $26,000 it was hard to complain.

We owe thanks to many FlyerTalkers. Dave Noble, thadocta and QF NB helped me book a QF domestic open-jaw itinerary wisely. dannyr and GibSpmuh provided guidance on SYD airport hotels and Mwenenzi pointed me to wotif.com. Guy Betsy, number_6, christep and Swanhunter gave insight into CX, with whom I had not flown for some years. (There were white stripes on the tails last time.) And rkkwan had helpful advice for my wife’s Hong Kong shopping layover.

I redeemed Marriott points to stay at the delightful Brisbane Marriott. I had intended to redeem HHonors points for three or four nights at the Sydney Hilton and actually booked the award before reading ozstamps’ illuminating notes on the smallness of the rooms and discouraging service lapses. Contact with the Hilton revealed that it has no rooms capable of housing two adults and a child. They offered to sell me a second, adjoining room for my 12-year-old at the rack rate. I responded by canceling, reclaiming my points and moving camp to the better-equipped Sydney Harbour Marriott and its comfortable “double-double” rooms.

After heavy web research and email negotiation we rented an RV from Coolabah Motorhomes (www.coolabahmotorhomes.com.au), an affiliate of Around Australia Motorhomes, and booked an Uluru/Kings Canyon/Kata Tjuta tour with Emu Run Tours (www.emurun.com.au). We recommend both highly.

Now for the trip report, recalibrated from actual events to be 90 percent devoted to airline flights.

CX889 YVR-HKG 26-27 Jun 2006
Aircraft: Boeing 747-400
Seat: 83C
STD: 0255 Actual: 0515
STA: 0710 Actual: 0855
Block to block duration: 12:40

Traveling alone, my wife and son following in 24 hours, I took a bus shuttle from my home north of Seattle to YVR, arriving shortly after midnight. Early for an 0255 departure, but the check-in area was still crowded; I guess at that hour it’s either go to bed or go to the airport. No line for business class check-in. Practically the first words out of the agent’s mouth were: “I regret to inform you that your flight is delayed.” It seems the 747 serving as CX888/889, HKG-YVR-JFK-YVR-HKG, departed HKG two hours late some 30 hours ago and was still running two hours behind now. This endangered my connection in HKG to CX139 for Sydney; the scheduled layover was only 1:50. The agent agreed: “You will not make your connection. There is no way.”

My heart sank. I knew if I missed CX139 the next SYD service didn’t leave for ten hours. And it was an overnight flight; I’d miss a comfy (and prepaid) hotel bed in Sydney. Nonetheless, I asked the agent to please confirm me on the next flight out, and here’s where she started to alarm me: she peered at the screen and noted that I was flying on an award ticket, and then began to utter a lot of phrases no airline passenger wants to hear: “not possible… limited availability… restrictions of your fare class… waitlist… special telex to Hong Kong…” English was not her first language, and I tried very hard to understand and be polite, but the gist I gathered was that I could not be confirmed on an onward flight to SYD, I’d get no second-segment boarding pass, and I should proceed to HKG and sort of see what happened next.

I was not terribly happy with this kind of vagueness, but the agent was very firm, and besides, there were similar conversations going on all around us; lots of connections were getting shredded by the late-running CX889. In the end there was nothing to do but go through security, take my first-segment BP up to the CX lounge, and sit the delay out. The instructions were to appear at the boarding gate no later than 450a for a 510a departure.

The lounge was very pleasant. At that hour, well past midnight, there was a pan of warm noodles, fresh dim sum including shu mai, delicious fresh-cut sandwiches, a full menu of drink, and a bank of free Internet terminals which I used to email the Sunbus shuttle-bus service in Sydney and warn them not to meet CX139 Tuesday evening as I wouldn’t be aboard. And about twenty minutes after I arrived, the lounge manager approached me, bowed, and presented me with a freshly printed BP for CX111, the Tuesday evening HKG-SYD service. Whatever got worked out, got worked out fast.

The lounge gradually filled up and the hours ticked by. I had a couple of drinks and a little something to eat. I can’t be the only passenger who went to sleep for awhile.

I was, however, the only one in the lounge when I snapped awake, miraculously, at exactly 445a. The sky was lightening through the windows. No passengers, no staff; the place was deserted, and boarding for my flight was theoretically closing in four minutes at the other end of the airport. I’d been left there. Feeling sick and silly – imagine missing the flight now – I grabbed my bag and jacket and ran out the door into a completely deserted terminal like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, reaching the faraway gate at the last possible moment. We’ll never know if they’d have sent someone back to the lounge to wake me, or just put me on the next plane ten hours later.

It looked like about 150 people boarded at YVR. I took my aisle seat on the upper deck and declined the pre-departure juices and water. The pax who’d boarded at JFK (“three hours late!” huffed my seatmate) looked at us new arrivals as if we were making things even worse.

We pushed back into full daylight at 515a and, with nothing moving at YVR at that hour, climbed into the sky just minutes later.

Then menus were passed out, drinks were offered, and at an hour most mortal souls can barely face hot coffee, we started in on dinner. It was defined as a “refreshment,” but it was simply a business class dinner service without the starter course.

“Refreshment” served about 0600 Vancouver time:

Fresh seasonal fruit

Main courses:

Pan-fried cod with Beijing style chilli sauce, steamed rice and Chinese broccoli

or

Grilled lamb chops with cream mustard sauce, roasted red potato wedges, and mixed vegetables

or

Chicken and black mushroom congee accompanied by spring onion pancake

or

Slices of smoked baby salmon with marinated prawns and creamed horseradish

Wines offered:

Champagne Deutz, Brut Classic
Arthur Barolet & Fils Saint Veran 2004 (white Burgundy)
Blackstone Monterey County Chardonnay 2003
L’Ostal Cazes Cru la Laviniere 2003 (Syrah 65%)
Sebastiani Sonoma County Zinfandel 2001
Mercurey Domaine Louis Max 2001 (red burgundy)
Dow’s Late Bottled Vintage Port 2000

Cheese plate

Raspberry cheesecake

Tea and coffee

Pralines

I drank the Syrah and ate the pan-fried cod and cheesecake for God knows what reason, as I’d hit the dim sum pretty hard back at the lounge. For “fried” food served inflight it was respectable, as was most CX food in the days ahead. A couple of nits about service logistics, though. Main courses were served off an aisle cart as if it were a sort of mini-rolling cafeteria, and aisle-seat pax stick their faces pretty close to the wares while choosing; it’d be more elegant, and maybe more sanitary, to take orders, then plate things up in the galley. (Maybe not practicable in large business class cabins like aboard the 2-class A340, but certainly in smaller ones like the 747 top deck or the A330.) Also, condiments like chilli sauce or salad dressing are served in plastic packets as if you were at Sizzler. They should appear in ramekins or something.

This is not to impugn the tireless, friendly, gracious cabin staff who were uniformly personable and wonderful.

The cabin went to sleep, and I certainly tried. I found the business class seat very comfortable when sitting upright or reclining, much less so when fully “straightened out” for sleeping. As others have noted, it’s at best about ten degrees off horizontal, so you keep sliding down. (And if my subsequent flights were anything to go by, my seat on this 747 wasn’t totally working; future seats got closer to horizontal.) And all the motors and servos buzzing away in the seat must be a maintenance nightmare. (On my wife’s and son’s later HKG-SYD flight, their seat set wasn’t working at all and they were moved.)

Snack, available anytime between the refreshment and the breakfast service:

Barbecued pork bun

Wontons and shui gaw in noodle soup

Selected sandwiches

Haagen-Dazs ice cream

I dug into the IFE and enjoyed it very much, although nobody wanted to play interactive trivia with me at that hour. I had an embarrassing moment in the dark when my handheld, corded StudioCX IFE controller slid down between the seat cushion and the armrest, getting lost in there and jamming the seat in a semi-reclining position. I had to get out and kneel in the aisle, find the controller and free it carefully.

Breakfast served two hours before landing, about 0700 Hong Kong time:

Juice selection

Fresh seasonal fruit

Fruit yoghurt, corn flakes or raisin bran

Main courses:

Omelette with creamed wild mushrooms, grilled Canadian bacon, Lyonnaise potatoes and broiled tomato with herbs

or

Braised e-fu noodles with mushrooms and Chinese dim sum, served with chilli sauce

or

Congee with shredded pork and mushroom accompanied by spring onion pancake

Assorted warm bread and breakfast pastries served with preserves, honey and butter

Tea and coffee

I had the Chinese breakfast, which was delicious but odd in combination with the buttered croissants, etc. offered first. I found the onboard coffee uncommonly good.

We overflew Taipei as breakfast began and started a slow early-morning descent into HKG. The connecting-flight advice screens began flashing in the cabin, alternating with the airshow data, but in most cases the onward flights had left HKG already, or were about to, and the advice was to consult an agent on arrival. We broke out of cloud and shot a straight-in approach to Chek Lap Kok, landing smoothly and parking at Gate 27 just five minutes before my original connection to SYD departed.

When we deplaned, though, I got a good look at CX service recovery in action. There were eight to ten ground service personnel awaiting our flight at the top of the jetway. On two portable trestle tables dozens of replacement boarding passes sat ready for the misconnects, most with hotel vouchers clipped to them. Every passenger was approached and personally dealt with. If you fly Northwest Airlines a lot like I do, it was a literally unbelievable sight. The hotel comps alone must have cost Cathay several thousands of dollars.

I was confirmed on the 705p flight to SYD, given a day room with an airport/sea view at the Regal Hotel (an easy three-minute enclosed walk beyond Immigration) that would have cost me HK$2000, comped to the lunch buffet at the Regal’s Café Aficionado and offered a free three-minute phone call anywhere in the world. (I don’t know if Economy passengers went to the Regal too or to a lesser facility.) Less than an hour after landing I was showered and stretched out in a Regal terry robe in my room, watching the BBC. I used my three-minute call to ring my Sydney hotel and warn them to expect me early Wednesday morning, not late Tuesday night.

I opted not to go into Hong Kong to pass the time mainly because the temperature was pushing 100F with oppressive humidity and I had no clean clothes in my hand baggage. The hotel buffet was massive and pretty good if you stuck to the sushi, seafood and salads and avoided the heavy, saucy “Chinese food” laid on for westerners, and after a post-lunch nap I showered once more, checked out, and went back to the airport.

CX111 HKG-SYD 27-28 Jun 2006
Aircraft: Airbus A330-300 3-Class
Seat: 16K
STD: 1905 Actual: 1910
STA: 0615 Actual: 0635
Block to block duration: 9:25

My departure gate was 67 and I passed the pre-departure hours at the Pier, drinking Asahi Lights and reading the papers. After that huge lunch I couldn’t put down any Noodle Bar output. It was very quiet and peaceful at the Pier at the dinner hour: low ceilings, low light, low noise, good view of the airfield. I was very happy in there.

We boarded CX111 at 645p. The business class cabins were about three-quarters full. Champagne, juices and Cathay Delights were passed. My seatmate was an older Australian woman whom I recognized from the lounge back in Vancouver. She’d been op-up’d from J to F on the YVR-HKG segment, but somehow missed the service recovery team on arrival and spent the past ten hours wandering the airport and hanging out at the Wing. She was nonplussed to hear I’d been luxuriating at the Regal.

We got personal seat-by-seat hellos from the cabin service director and pushed back only a couple of minutes late, taking off soon thereafter.

The special “Best Chinese Food in the Air” menu was presented with an insert reading:

“Indulge yourself in the air and on the ground. To celebrate our 60th anniversary as Hong Kong’s home carrier, we’re bringing you our best-ever “Best Chinese Food in the Air” promotion. From March through December, our menus will feature a rotating selection of nearly 100 dishes from some of Hong Kong’s best restaurants. And our partner restaurants have created special Cathay Pacific menus at 20% off. Simply keep your boarding pass and present it next time you’re in town.”

Dinner was served after takeoff, about 2000 Hong Kong time:

Seasonal salad served with raspberry vinaigrette dressing

Hot-smoked salmon on cucumber with peach and plum chutney

Main courses:

Braised spare rib with ginger and vinegar sauce, steamed rice and Chinese mixed vegetables (credited to Lei Garden Restaurant, Hong Kong)

or

Baked sea bass with herbs and butter in chicken jus, mashed potatoes, sautéed green beans and mushrooms

or

Pan-fried chicken with brown sauce, olive crushed new potato, roasted pumpkin with herbs and green beans

or

Field mushroom and garlic ravioli with tomato concasse

Cheese and fresh seasonal fruit

Apricot frangipane tart served with clotted cream

Tea and coffee

Pralines

Wines offered:

Champagne Deutz, Brut Classic
Framingham Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2005 (New Zealand)
Climbing Chardonnay 2005 (New South Wales, Australia)
Vieux Chateau Landon, Cru Bourgeois Medoc 2002 (Bordeaux)
Capel Vale Cabernet Sauvignon 2002 (Australia)
Dow’s Late Bottled Vintage Port 2000

I somehow packed down the sea bass and lashings of good Capel Vale, but passed on the apricot tart. It was easier to sleep on this flight. I think the seat performed closer to specifications than my first one, going flatter, but the servos inside still seemed cranky, sputtering erratically. Not getting these things for the home media room.

Breakfast served 90 minutes before landing, about 0430 Sydney time:

Juice selection

Fresh seasonal fruit

Fruit yoghurt, muesli or corn flakes

Main courses:

Plain omelette with pan-friend pork sausage, back bacon, oven roasted potatoes and braised beans

or

Dim sum selection served with chilli sauce (credited to Jade Garden Chinese Restaurant, Hong Kong)

or

Creamy mushrooms crepe, grilled streaky bacon, and roasted tomato with parsley

Baked pear tart

Tea and coffee

We approached SYD on schedule but were ordered by ATC to circle once, which we did, describing a jagged red clockwise circle on the airshow. Cleared in, we had a fine view of Sydney Harbour and the bridge just before dawn out the starboard side. We docked at Terminal 1, Gate 22 about 20 minutes late, and when I emerged into the A/B arrivals hall my shuttle driver was awaiting me, having received my schedule-change email sent from the YVR lounge about 37 hours previously.

Land Transit

My wife and son landed 28 hours later aboard CX139. After one jet lag recovery night at the Sydney Marriott overlooking Hyde Park, we taxied out to the suburbs to collect our rented motorhome – a fine, serviceable vehicle on a diesel Iveco truck frame, capable of sleeping five. We took a week to drive up to Brisbane the long way, across the Great Dividing Range and back again, putting in 2400km overall. An outstanding trip culminating with a day at the Australia Zoo in the Glasshouse Mountains area, where we sighted the great man Steve Irwin himself on a rare break from shooting ESPN promos. A very successful afternoon and night at the Brisbane Marriott, which my son pronounced the best hotel of the trip, then it was back in the sky.

BearX220

QF798 BNE-CNS 7 Jul 2006
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 2-Class
Seat: 8D
STD: 0710 Actual: 0710
STA: 0935 Actual: 0935
Block to block duration: 2:25

We were off to Alice Springs to see a little of Australia’s interior. BNE-ASP nonstops operate only on weekends, so given the choice of connecting back through SYD or via Cairns, I picked the latter to get a look at one more new airport.

We ordered a 515a taxi from the Brisbane CBD and were at the BNE domestic terminal by 545a. The Qantas kiosks spat out our BPs (8D, 8E, 8F for this leg – not bad for cheap “red hot e-deal tickets” purchased months before) and we lined up to check our five bags. Here we encountered the only really unpleasant airline person of the trip – a QF desk agent who turned chilly as soon as she heard our non-Aussie accents, made us turn our bags this way and that on the conveyor belt, and kept adding up kilos, hoping she could charge us an excess-weight fee. (No.) Here’s an oddity: nobody ever asked to see our IDs. We passed through check-in and security quickly and by 610a were up in the departures hall drinking coffee and watching the early Cityflyer businessmens’ expresses to SYD and MEL leave.

Our Cairns flight was more than half populated by a big Japanese tour group, and when 650a rolled around and QF798 was called, we saw something amazing: a 737-800 fully boarded in orderly, constantly-flowing fashion, without any boarding-by-rows protocols, in ten minutes flat. The people in the aisle never stopped walking aft. Hand baggage was under control, people knew where their seats were, and they knew enough to step out of the aisle when they reached their row. This would have taken two to three times as long in the States.

Consequently we pushed back bang on time at 710a and were flying over Brisbane a frew minutes later, picking out our hotel near the Story Bridge across the Brisbane River.

There was a light trayed breakfast in Economy consisting of muesli and milk, a chewy fruit snack, a warm baked good of some sort, juice, and coffee or tea. Not fancy, but well-designed and filling. In contrast to our snippy QF ground agent the FAs were very pleasant and good-humored – a trick with so many non-Anglophones aboard. While we ate, free IFE (headphones supplied at the gate) showed a custom-for-QF morning newscast anchored by Nine’s Sharyn Ghidella – when does she have time to tape it, before going on the Today program at 700a? – followed by light features.

Clean plane, a tray of food, happy crew, decent IFE, free headphones: a series of pricking reminders of what the US domestic airline business has collapsed to.

We had good views of the Barrier Reef as we swept into CNS low from the east, out over the sea, and landed on time at this charming airport, where you deplane through open-air walkways fringed by palm trees.

We were automatically delivered landside and had to go through security again to connect onward, but found the Cairns domestic terminal very welcoming and good fun; it’s essentially one largish rotunda, decorated in marine hues and fringed by shops and a café, with three boarding ramps leading off in various directions. They called an average of two flights per hour. Hopefully the café manager did not think 1030a was an obscene hour to start drinking Victoria Bitter.

QF1949 CNS-ASP 7 Jul 2006
Aircraft: Boeing 717-200 1-Class
Seat: 17D
STD: 1155 Actual: 1150
STA: 1340 Actual: 1335
Block to block duration: 2:15

This flight was operated by QantasLink, the relatively new blanket name for the old dog’s breakfast of QF subsidiaries, and I was curious to see how it differed from QF mainline.

The flight was called to board at 1140a when someone switched on a flashing screen that read FINAL CALL in fierce red letters. Only a smattering of people got up in slight confusion, and it turns out our 717 was carrying a very light load down to the Alice this Friday; less than 50 people in all, with the three of us in 17D, 17E, and 17F. We were all aboard and settled less than ten minutes before our scheduled pushback time of 1155a, so we gunned the engines and left! Just as we rolled my wife slid across the aisle into the empty 17A; this earned her a cabin-PA warning and a fierce, if sort of unfocused, talking-to from an FA as we taxied.

We were airborne in minutes at uncrowded CNS and passed over a beautiful azure sea before heading inland, where things quickly turned flat, arid and brown. Here came the bush.

Our aircraft had no IFE and no business-class section, but it certainly had food: a proper trayed lunch consisting of a fresh ham-cheese-and-tomato baguette, cheese and Arnott’s crackers, and a Twix bar plus full bar service. (I had an Emu Export beer the FA forgot to charge me for. He returned later to tell me he’d forgotten, but not to worry about paying either. Hmm.)

We passed over Mt. Ida and lined up for ASP bang on time once again, rolling to a stop as one of only two aircraft at the small, charming QF-dominated Alice Springs terminal. It was a gorgeous day and a pleasure to deplane the old-fashioned way, down open stairs and across the tarmac with the engines’ whine in our ears. All our bags popped out in minutes flat and we were off into the Alice on the groaning shuttle bus that meets all arrivals.

Land Note

Three days in Alice Springs is not enough, especially when you spend two of them away on a 1500km marathon trek to Kings Canyon, the Olgas (Kata Tjuta), Uluru/Ayers Rock and Mt. Ebenezer with the aforementioned, highly competent and entertaining Emu Run Tours. What a breathtaking part of the world this is, and how few people make the effort to go see it; most of our company was east-coast Australians seeing the Northern Territory for the first time. The Alice is no mere waterhole – it has a McDonald’s, a Kmart, and at least one superb Chinese restaurant, the Golden Inn. I mean, surreally superb. We had to keep reminding ourselves we were technically in the middle of nowhere.

QF 791 ASP-SYD 10 Jul 2006
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 2-Class
Seat: 8D
STD: 1315 Actual: 1315
STA: 1625 Actual: 1630
Block to block duration: 2:45

I hate relying on prebooked airport shuttles to pick me up. I’m never sure I’ll be remembered, or that I’ll get to the check-in counter in enough time to suit me; I prefer a taxi, or better still my own car. But I’d bought a return ticket from the shuttle driver on arrival at Alice, and now here we were on a dusty sidewalk in front of our hotel at 1140a, counting on this bus to show up in time for us to make our 115p flight to Sydney.

All needless big-city, big-airport worries. The shuttle appeared at 1145a, we got to the airport by noon, and by 1210p we were all checked in, BP’d and wondering what to do with ourselves.

No check-in kiosks at ASP; you must talk to a live human being in order to fly, which makes rather a change in itself. The QF agent was far friendlier than her BNE counterpart but did make a firm point of wanting to see and scan our passports, and have us confirm that we carried no compressed gases, hunting knives, or other Banned Objects in our carry-ons.

We were assigned 8D, 8E and 8F again, same as on the BNE-CNS leg, and toddled off to the airside Todd River Ale House for pasties and VBs on the capacious, sun-baked open-air deck that runs almost to the edge of the tarmac. Parrots, magpies and pink-and-white galahs dueled for food scraps around us as we said how sorry we were to be leaving the Red Centre so soon.

Our mainline QF 737 rolled in from elsewhere about 45 minutes before departure and we were called to board at 1250p or so. Again, no row-by-row protocols, no crazy zone scheme, but the whole job was done in orderly fashion in 15 minutes flat, even with far fewer Japanese holidaymakers among us this time. The flight was nearly full, mostly with tourists like ourselves, and we pushed back on time, taking off minutes later. (At ASP there is no taxiway parallel to the runway that I saw; we taxied down the runway, pivoted 180 degrees in place, and took off the way we’d come.)

Once airborne the FAs started a free movie, Take the Lead with Antonio Banderas, and distributed a choice of light lunch – a ham sandwich on grain bread or a “chicken salad,” actually just a few bits of poached chicken atop unsauced greens with a little cup of vinaigrette on the side – small but fresh. Bar service available also of course. It was a fine Economy class experience in all and as we watched out the window the bush country gradually greened up and gave way to rolling farmland, then Parkes and the Blue Mountains. Soon we could spot the ocean and we flew out over it, keeping Sydney to our port side, before turning left twice and landing. We parked, conveniently, at Gate 1 in the Domestic Terminal and waited about 20 minutes for our bags, which all made it. By 530pm we were back in the city via taxi, but with red desert dust still caked on our shoes. It’s a magical world.

BearX220

Land Note

We stayed for four days at the Sydney Harbour Marriott, which seems to be the layover hotel for UA crews, who rolled in from arriving flights around 830a just as I went out to buy coffee and rolls. One morning my son and I were on our room floor awaiting a down elevator when the doors slid open, revealing a beefy, florid, disheveled UA flight attendant, female, who glared out at us and barked angrily: “Is this 22?!?” I almost said to my son, “My boy, that’s why we fly Cathay Pacific.” But I held my tongue. I rode up and down with a number of senior uniformed UA folks during our Marriott stay. They didn’t hold much back about the flights they’d just worked, the customers they’d just served, or how terrible their lives were in general. All I can say is, I’m happy with the airlines we picked.

After a splendid in-city period highlighted by lunch at the Sosumi sushi train in the Martin Place GPO, a fine fish dinner at Doyle’s on Circular Quay (overpriced, but such a view of the harbour!), one long sunny afternoon in Manly and another at Peter Foote’s in The Rocks, it was time to head home. My son and I transferred Thursday night to the Mercure Hotel two minutes from the SYD international terminal and delivered my wife to Thursday night’s CX138 to HKG. After she went airside we enjoyed the breezy, noisy, fuel-fumed open-air observation deck atop the Esky Bar, accessible behind the C check-in counters – such things are, ridiculously, distant memories in the US. Back at the Mercure we put in for a wakeup call at 415a and fell asleep watching the footy.

CX110 SYD-HKG 14 Jul 2006
Aircraft: Airbus A330-300 3-Class
Seat: 12H
STD: 0735 Actual: 0815
STA: 1500 Actual: 1540
Block to block duration: 9:25

We caught the 500a Mercure shuttle bus (free when it collects you at the airport, but $4 per head to take you back! Sneaky!) over to SYD Terminal 1, where CX occupies the A check-in counters. No waiting in the business class line, but, as at YVR at the start of the trip, the agent noted, pointedly, that we were flying on award tickets, which I didn’t much like. There is always the intimation of second-class citizenry. But our adjacent seat assignments held up even though my son and I were on two different PNRs, and we got our SYD-HKG and HKG-YVR BPs plus lounge passes for SYD and HKG.

There were only a couple of international departures getting organized at that hour, a QF flight to Auckland being the earliest, and Immigration didn’t open until 530a. We were among the first through, then went upstairs to a friendly greeting at the Qantas Club lounge which we pretty much had to ourselves. Pelting rain drumming the windows just before sunup. Good news: VB on tap. Bad news: the tap is taped shut at that early hour. I could make Bloody Marys, though, and there was a fair presentation of juices, cereals, toast and fruit.

We were just starting to think about going downstairs to hit the shops, then locate Gate 32 as instructed by 715a, when the QF club staff announced the incoming CX aircraft had only just arrived, well behind schedule, and CX110 would board around 740a. Oh dear – another close connection at HKG, and if we missed this one the next HKG-YVR service would be 22 hours later! But when we reached the gate the ground staff assured us we’d be fine.

Boarding came at 750a but went very quickly. It was a light load. We were in 12H and 12K in the front business class cabin, where 8 of 14 seats were occupied. The other J cabin looked about as full, and there couldn’t have been 100 in Economy. We were offered water, orange or apple juice but no Champagne. My son busied himself verifying that his seat was fully motorized and operational. Cabin staff flew around with the usual politesse and efficiency, but no personal seat-by-seat hellos. Some were wearing vintage CX uniforms from bygone eras as part of the airline’s 60th anniversary celebration; I was told the staff could choose to do it or not, and pick the era they liked best. It certainly made the cabin more elegant.

We pushed at 0815 and were airborne ten minutes later. So sorry to leave Sydney.

Breakfast was served after takeoff, about 0900 Sydney time:

Juice selection

Fresh seasonal fruit

Fruit yoghurt, muesli or corn flakes

Main courses:

Scrambled eggs with bacon, sausage, hash brown potatoes and tomatoes

or

Stir-fried noodles with soya sauce and spring onion, and Chinese dim sum served with chilli sauce

or

Congee with minced pork and preserved mustard greens

Assorted warm bread and breakfast pastries served with preserves, honey and butter

Tea and coffee

Chinese breakfast for me again, which was fine, then I finished watching rude British sitcoms on StudioCX (some of those Little Britain episodes are so vulgar, you’re embarrassed to be seen choosing them) while my son absorbed She’s The Man and V For Vendetta.

Lunch was served at midday Sydney time:

Seasonal salad served with Italian vinaigrette

Prosciutto with asparagus, grano padano, semi sun-dried tomato and garlic oil

Main courses:

Dory fillet with chervil cream sauce, boiled potatoes, roast pumpkin and green beans

or

Stir-fried chicken with oyster mushrooms, steamed rice and choy sum

or

Roast lamb rack with natural gravy, creamy polenta, mixed greens and wax beans

or

Pumpkin gnocchi with pistachio, tomato and sage cream sauce

Wines offered:

The same list as on CX111 Hong Kong – Sydney.

Cheese and fresh seasonal fruit

Chocolate mud cake

Tea and coffee

Pralines

I had the dory fillet, which was a big portion in a slightly cloying cream sauce, while No. 1 son demolished the chicken with gusto. As we cleared Indonesia and started across the South China Sea abreast of Vietnam, I began keeping a close eye on the airshow screen – hoping we’d somehow make up some lost minutes. Otherwise we’d have precious little Wing/Pier time. No magic tailwind appeared, though, and we touched down at HKG at 335pm, exactly as the system predicted the minute we’d left Australian soil.

We taxied to Gate 64 and docked 40 minutes late. Our onward flight to YVR was scheduled to leave in less than one hour, at 435pm. But judging from the connecting flights displayed aboard the aircraft a lot of fellow pax were cutting things closer than we were, with their next segments leaving for TPE, NRT or BJS at 405p or 410p, and as we deplaned there was, once again, a phalanx of CX ground staff holding signs to attract and aid those running things close.

CX838 HKG-YVR, 14 Jul 2006
Aircraft: A340-300, 2-Class
Seat: 14C
STD: 1635 Actual: 1640
STA: 1345 Actual: 1340
Block to block duration: 12:00

The YVR service was departing from Gate 3, at the other end of the airport, so my son and I rode the below-ground train up the spine of the terminal and used transfer point E2 to emerge in the nexus of the shopping area. The low-number gates were a mob scene at this hour, with huge crowds lined up for LAX, SGN and YVR, and the Wing entry was similarly chaotic; the besieged front-desk people never saw us slip in, so we retained our passes. Upstairs it was heaving with customers, including numerous running small children; I honestly preferred the Pier. We had a drink and a sandwich – no time to enjoy the Noodle Bar – and then it was 415pm and time to head down and across to our flight.

We boarded with no waiting, using the dedicated business class jetway, and found my wife waiting for us in 14D as we claimed 14A and 14C. (Her big morning in Hong Kong had been somewhat abortive owing to high heat, humidity and fatigue, but she’d had a good look at Kowloon and Nathan Road before flagging and retreating to HKG and the comforts of the Wing shower rooms.) The cabin was tropically uncomfortable. Champagne, juice and Cathay Delights were passed as the business class cabin filled to 100% and we all verified our seats could perform all the expected folding/unfolding tricks.

This time we each got two personal hellos and thank-you-for-flying-with-uses from the cabin service director and a senior FA, cool towels were passed after the cabin door closed, we pushed back close to on time, and fell in behind the LAX-bound 747-400 for a speedy takeoff into the humid murk. We lost sight of the city quickly.

The special “best Chinese Food in the Air” menu jacket was again presented, as it was on CX111, Hong Kong-Sydney, back in late June. But disappointingly, the two main meal menus were identical to those offered on CX111 and listed earlier in this report, with “breakfast” here recharacterized as “refreshment.” Dinner was served at about 1800 Hong Kong time; I had the Lei Garden braised spare ribs which were very good. My son opted for the mushroom and garlic ravioli which he pronounced so-so. Its “tomato concasse” was a thin, bland sauce that could have come from an American supermarket shelf but may have been calculated to please unadventurous palates.

Wines offered:

Champagne Deutz, Brut Classic
Arthur Barolet & Fils Saint Veran 2004 (white Burgundy)
Blackstone Monterey County Chardonnay
L’Ostal Cazes Cru la Laviniere 2003 (Syrah 65%)
Sebastiani Sonoma County Zinfandel 2004
Laboure Roi Aloxe Corton Les Hautes Tours 2000 (Burgundy)
Dow’s Late Bottled Vintage Port 2000

In addition, the following snack selection was available anytime between dinner and the refreshment service:

Selected sandwiches

Chicken and leek pasty with salad and balsamic vinegar dressing

Shrimp wontons in noodle soup (credited to Jade Garden Restaurant, Hong Kong)

Haagen-Dazs ice cream

We were too full to try any of these.

I was asked to complete an inflight survey on customer service elements in return for a nifty Cathay Pacific pen and gave generally high marks. But there was no place to record my minor nits about serving style, nor my only major nit of the trip, namely that CX seems to schedule longhaul turnarounds too ambitiously and should build some slack into the schedule at the out-station end. If CX888/889 had had an extra hour of ground time built into its JFK turn, I would probably have made CX139 to SYD as planned at the head of the trip… and on the return slog, we came within 50 minutes of missing CX839 back to YVR for similar reasons.

I had the dim sum for the "refreshment" (read: breakfast), my second dim sum plate of the day, and thought it was excellent, considering, although the sticky rice wrapped in its big leaf was in turn wrapped in a protective paper thing that should have been removed before serving. Could not face the pear tart on top of everything else, but my son had no such compunctions.

On this flight I achieved my only on-time CX arrival of the trip. We pulled in next to a just-arriving JAL 747-400 at YVR five minutes ahead of schedule. Even though we were among the first to disembark, Immigration and Customs were something of a rugby scrum – early afternoon seems like rush hour for Vancouver arrivals – but we got out of the building in just under one hour and collected an Avis car from the convenient on-site location for the 2.5 hour drive across the border and home.

The US Immigration officer manning the booth at Blaine, Washington was interested only in what we’d paid for our Australia tickets, as he wanted to go himself someday! I told him $1200-$1400 in coach was about the minimum nut and he whistled. “That’s why we cashed in miles,” I said. I didn’t mention business class.

We got home safe and went to bed having racked up a 35-hour Friday, which my son will enjoy explaining to his classmates, and some excellent travel experiences.

Postscript

On a one-to-ten scale, I would rate Cathay Pacific a straight ten for customer service/service recovery; ten for IFE; nine for lounge quality; seven for catering and drink; six for business class seat quality and six for punctuality.

I would rate Qantas/Qantaslink a seven for customer service; seven for IFE; nine for lounge quality (based only on SYD International – we didn’t have access to the domestic lounges); seven for catering and drink, seven for economy class seat quality and ten for punctuality.

Overall, we had a wonderful trip and I appreciate your joining us for it in this vicarious fashion.

andol469

I recently returned from a month-long trip to Australia, and I already miss flying QF.

And you're right about Alice, I only spent 4 days/3 nights there including trips to Uluru, Kings Canyon, etc. Not enough time for me personally. Maybe I'll go back and try the Chinese restaurant you mentioned. ^

Moomba

ROFLMAO

I agree with you about the Red Centre. I still have vivid memories of my trip to the Alice and Darwin when I was 7. (A lot of years ago I assure you!). You make me yearn to visit the place again.

I hope the YVR-HKG is not always late from NYC. In Sept I will be flying from LGW-DFW-YVR to pick up the remainder of my RTW trip starting with the YVR-HKG. As it is I have an 8 hour layover in YVR.

olimaspecto

Did you find AwardPlanner that helpful? What do you think that they provided (if anything) that you couldnt do yourself, or as it more about saving time?

Loose Cannon

Did you take the Quick Shuttle up to YVR?

BearX220

Moomba, CX888/889 has its on-time problems. There is a thread in the CX forum on this. CX 838/839 may be better because it turns in YVR, but the airplane's scheduled turn time is a tight 1:20. If it's late out of HKG it's going to be late returning.

Olimaspecto, we found AwardPlanner indispensable, if only because of the time saving. I just don't have an hour per day for a month or more to spend on the phone with an award-seat agent, trying all the airlines and routings and dates in their dozens of permutations over and over, waiting for something to shake loose. The AwardPlanner people also have relationships with some of the more competent agents at the airlines' award desks.

Loose Cannon, I did ride Quick Shuttle from Everett to YVR. It was comfortable and reasonably priced, but the timetable is a bit of creative writing. I made sure I had slack time built into my schedule.

Illini_Fan

Great post. I'm thinking of doing DFW-CNS-AKL-DFW next summer via OneWorld award tickets. Would most likely use CX via HKG, so the information is appreicated.