Originally Posted by
nov11
Flew HKG-LAX last month when LAX is down to 1 daily. Flight is staffed by a mix of HKG and LAX based crew on CX880 (which is rare since LAX crew usually work on CX882). Guess they are trying to balance LAX and HKG crew based on the limited number of flights between the two cities.
Originally Posted by
ernestnywang
I thought they mix crew from different bases quite frequently especially in F/J?
Originally Posted by
nov11
Not that I am aware of. I know 882/881 is mostly LAX based. Flew 884/880 and 883 quite a few times and they were all HKG based (at least those that were working in my aisle).
I have no idea how it is being done during coronavirus.
But in the past, CX882/881 was LAX base, although on 1-2 days per week it would be a "mixed" crew. Sometimes the "mixed" crew was only 2-3 FAs from HK and still mostly LAX. Essentially the same protocol for SFO's CX873/872 and JFK's CX845/830. By and large you should've been banking on a US-base for those flight numbers. And...if you were like me, avoiding them in F class like the plague. I used to fly a lot more J class, and ironically I found I preferred US-based crews because I would get to know some of them. J class experience could really be elevated, and essentially a la carte if you knew the crew. But it was mostly just a function of knowing them. And in F the US base crew lack of professionalism, inexperience, and generally far inferior standards shone through time and time again. I'm not speaking of one or two anecdotes. I'm talking about too many long-haul flights in F to count, with at least 15 on US-based crews in F. The sample size is too big for me to think it's just random. I think the US crews were a very bad look for CX.
Also, once in a while you would get weird situations where HK crew were rostered on those flights for whatever reason. It wasn't guaranteed those flights were US crew, but very high likelihood.
All of this is obviously changing bigtime now and I don't know what is the result of the rostering during corona.