CX507 KIX-HKG B744 (74A) B-HUG
On my way up from Hong Kong the purser had mentioned that they were only catered for one of everything out of Kansai, and in the process raised my hopes that I might score that elusive empty cabin. I was greeted at the door with laughs and the magic phrase which one can only ever hope to hear... “take any seat you want”. I was blocked back into 2A but ended up choosing 1A again, if only because it was the same crew and same plane again.
I commiserated my return to Hong Kong with a pre takeoff glass of champagne.
The safety video played, and I amused myself by trying to see how well I could recite word-for-word the narrative (well, the crew had already decided I was committable, so it probably made no difference by this point). I was a bit off – need improvement. Or I need a life. Take your pick. As the only passenger, I got a personal “this is where your nearest exit is” from the crew, though the purser dryly pointed out that I probably knew better than they did where the doors were.
After takeoff along came my requested Oriental Breeze and more nuts/Japanese snack mix. Only difference this time round was that there were only almonds and macadamias in my nut dish, because the senior purser had noticed that I had left the walnuts on the way up and so went through and picked out all the walnuts before bringing the ramekin out.
This is why I love this airline.
I’d elected to eat closer to landing rather than takeoff, and there weren’t any other pressing service needs in the cabin, so the two pursers serving up front were happy to linger and chat for a bit, covering topics as esoteric as: Apple Daily (Chinese language tabloid), inflight sex scandals (recently splashed across front page of said Chinese language tabloid), movies in which actresses need not show their face (purser’s suggestion of alternative career option for flight attendant whose photo was splashed across said front page of Chinese language tabloid) and unruly passengers (four cowering petite female flight attendants once handcuffing a drunk midget Frenchman: “are the handcuffs too tight? Do we need to loosen?”). Just to name a few. I was also highly amused to be told that the rest of the crew thought I was a management spy. I’m not sure I quelled their fears given that if I ever went on Mastermind Cathay Pacific would be in the running for, if not, my specialist subject.
I moved to 4K for the meal service. A) Because I wanted to try out a seat which I would never choose under normal circumstances. And B) I felt slightly guilty at making the crew walk all the way up to 1A from the galley. Of course by the logic of reason A I should have chosen 4D, which is arguably the worst seat in the whole cabin, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to go quite that far.
Dinner
Starters
Smoked duck breast with asparagus and fennel salad
Tomato, orange and basil soup
Main Courses
Pan-fried sea bass with green pea, mashed potato, white cream chive sauce and mixed vegetables
Deep-fried lamb chop with garlic and spicy salt, egg fried rice and stir-fried broccoli
Saffron fettucine with artichoke and button mushrooms
Cheese and Dessert
Fourme d’Ambert, Manchego, Arenberger, French Brie
Fresh seasonal fruit
Chocolate charlotte with raspberry coulis
Tea and Coffee
Pralines
Japanese Meal
Cathay Pacific is pleased to offer a seasonal Japanese meal,
in traditional Kaiseki style, as an alternative choice.
Canapes
Boiled scallop with seasoned salmon roe, braised mushroom with sesame paste, grilled shellfish skewer, cheese cake with fish egg sheet and chestnut
Appetizer
Tuna tataki style, Japanese yam, pickled cod roe with chilli,
shrimps and sweet potato
served with Chinese quince wine with soda
Braised Dish with Clear Soup
Pumpkin ball with chicken meat, braised matsutake mushroom
Clear soup with white sea tangle roll and bean curd with mushroom
Main Course
Side Dish
Smoked salmon belly with seasoned salmon roe, seaweed and boiled octopus roe
Noodle
Yuzu soba and green tea noodles with egg julienne and nameko mushrooms
Hot Dish
Sea bass uni motoyaki with abalone
Rice served with assorted pickles and miso soup
Fruit
Fresh seasonal fruit
To compliment [sic] your Japanese meal experience, Ginjyo-sake is available.
The duck was nice, but I always thought fennel was a weed.
The crew served me both starters, not knowing of my declaration of war against the tomato. I pretended I was just drinking carrot soup with tomato flavouring. This delusion helped me keep it down. Dare I say, it was actually all right. Might I be losing my hatred for the tomato after all?
Hot crusty bread. Yumness.
I switched back to the Western main course, which was prefaced with an “I thought there would be three lamb chops” comment from the crew when it was brought out. Another chop would have been nice to balance out the generous serving of rice, but given I had been stuffing my face full of food all day it was probably a good thing there was only two.
Not that stuffing my face full of food all day stopped me from going for dessert, which I agreed with the purser after eating it was a better option than the apple pie served on the outbound.
As with lunch, and as promised by the menu, the meal was rounded off with pralines. Seeing as I’d eaten all of them on the way up, I decided discretion was the better part of valour (if discretion is indeed a subset of valour, which I’d be interested to see expressed as a Venn diagram) and only nibbled at one or two before taking the ramekin back to the galley to avoid any further temptation. Really nice pralines though. But very addictive.
Having an empty cabin meant plenty of opportunities to take happy snaps without feeling self conscious. Including some snaps from angles which might be hard to explain with other people in the cabin. Like this one, taken by standing on top of 4D.
I do like taking photos in which the tops of people’s heads are not to be seen.
The captain came on to give us what he told us was good news – an early arrival and a close parking bay. Personally I didn’t consider what he told us good news. In fact I was kind of disappointed.
Do you really want to know why? You probably don’t. But I have control of the keyboard. I’ll tell you anyway.
Most of you fly for business. You don’t care what plane you get. Beyond the basic 747, A330, MD negative 18 (or whatever 50-year old equipment DL is flying these days). Some of you don’t even care about that. Those of you who fly a lot on airlines with a lot of subfleets probably invest some time into making sure you book on a flight that has the newest or nicest product. But beyond that you wouldn’t care less if you’d been on this particular plane five times before, ten times before, twenty times before. As long as it has the correct number of engines dangling off the wing and doesn’t look like it’s been flown through a hailstorm backwards, you’re happy.
And even if you do still idly glance out the window now and then to check out the registration, I bet none of you care what gate you get. Beyond working out how far it is to passport control so you can race the queues. Or the distance from lounge to gate, so you can calculate the optimal time to stop drinking and still make your flight.
I have a very strange obsession. (Well, clearly. I just flew to Osaka and back without leaving the airport. For fun.) But as part of this fascination with airplanes and other things civil aviation related, which I like to think stems from a misspent childhood rather than any fatal quirk of character, I log every flight that I take. You know the type of thing. Flight number. Plane type. Aircraft registration. Even gate numbers.
I’m sure my parents indulged me when I was younger, thinking that I’d grow out of it. I may yet. But until then, I will continue to collate my data. Sometimes I even run statistical analyses on it. The Cathay 747 I’ve been on the longest counting frequency of trips and flight hours. Which gate at a particular airport I’ve parked at the most. Etc.
Yes, I know I really do need a life.
Anyway, I’ve flown in and out of HKG enough times that the airport isn’t new or exciting anymore. But I’ve not flown in and out enough times that I’ve hit all or even most of the gates. I’ve still quite a few to check off. And like the registrations, I thought this weekend of running would be an excellent opportunity to cross off a few. Even factoring in the probability of some repeats I thought I’d still be able to manage a couple of new planes and a couple of new gates.
I’m pretty certain I was the only passenger on board that plane who was hoping for some gate in the high even sixties. Instead, we got gate freaking 4. The only happy news was that it was indeed close to passport control. And it wasn’t the same gate we’d left from that morning. But that arrival gate, coupled with the fact that HUG was an aircraft on my registration spit list rather than my hit list, did mean that it wasn’t a very good day for my logs.
Still, as they say in that musical on Broadway, tomorrow is a latter day. Another 74A, another gate and another mileage run. I was looking forward to this one too, since it would be taking me to a couple of new airports and also over some geography I’d not flown over before. And not that I knew it then, but a chance meeting with a FlyerTalker.
Until next time, then.
(Ed. note: there is a letter 'p' in that second-to-last paragraph which can be substituted for a 'h'. Read it as you wish.)