For those interested I posted a mini comparison review of CX/SQ/QR J ex-LHR having completed several roundtrip J flights with them over the past few weeks/months.

I am going to expand on the CX J experience in a little bit more detail here - keen to get everyone’s thoughts if my observations below align with your recent experiences as well or perhaps I was just severely out of luck and got a bad set of crew across my flights?

Overall I had a very underwhelming experience even more so considering LHR is their most important flagship route - given the full (expensive) fare I paid this felt like very poor value of money overall. For background I had flown several SQ J flights ex-LHR in the weeks prior to this and multiple QR J ex-LHR flights in the months before - so coming from those flights the considerable drop in on board service quality with CX was very noticeable in my situation.

1. Pre-departure service:

On most flights the first interaction I had with the CX crew is not a “hello welcome onboard” but rather “champagne, juice or water?” from the tray. Several occasions where they had forgotten to offer either Hot Towel or PDB to myself/travel partner. The Purser on the LHR-HKG flight either forgot to do the greetings or chose not to do so, the first interaction I had with her was when she served my appetiser and added a tag line at the end “and by the way my name is XXX, welcome onboard” then walked away.

The sequence and timing of meal orders being taken seem to be rather disorganised, same crew going from one aisle to another, from one seat to another randomly - this led to a situation on one flight LHR-HKG Late night departure where my travel partner’s meal orders were somehow completely forgotten. We thought not to bother the crew too much during pre-takeoff hoping they would come back around after take-off. They seem quite busy given the full 77W load so did not want to bother too much pre take off.

During the flight later the Purser then served my Appetiser on a tray and I flagged to her that my partners meal orders had not been taken yet - in a slightly defensive way and without even checking with the FA working on the other aisle first, she just assumed “oh probably because they were asleep, let me check” (this was not true as my partner was awake the whole entire time). The purser came back a few mins later and said to my Partner “Hi, we did not want to disturb while you were asleep earlier - what would you like to eat?”. Not even a single apology and she seems to be so convinced my partner was asleep!

2. Seats

While the CX A350 J seats are very comfortable in bed mode with excellent storage and leg space you are very exposed to aisle noise and traffic (CX crews are very prone to running up and down stomping loudly as they go about their duties, more on this later). The lack of divider on the middle seats can be an issue as well if travelling alone. The 77W J seats though comfortable in bed mode is severely dated, dirty, broken in some parts with terrible screens and just not up to today’s standards at all. The 77W IFE screen was extremely slow and laggy with horrible screen quality I actually gave up using it.

I hope CX rolls out Aria rapidly to replace these severely aging seats on the 77Ws.

3. Meal choice, quality and presentation

Personally I think CX perhaps caters to a very specific local taste bud which do not align with mine personally and most meals I tasted on board are either bland or lacking in execution (though they sound good on paper; most don’t taste very nice in reality).

Even the restaurant collaboration dishes with Louise / Duddells fall short of expectation and taste just “bland” in my view. The first two choices of every main meal is always the same dishes from the snack all day menu as if purposely designed so your first attention is to the cheapest of dishes first.

Breakfast choice is very poor with everything on one plate, not even yoghurt. Fruit plate for breakfast is worse than some I’ve received in economy class. Presentation is also the worst in comparison with SQ/QR.

On the CX253 14h day flight HKG-LHR with more than enough time to do a more elaborate meal for the pre-arrival “light” dinner everything was served on a single tray with tiny fruit plate as ‘appetisers’ rather than a regular one, I felt they could have done a bit more given timing/flight length.

I also think there is a consistent theme of “blandness” across dishes (might just be my personal opinion) but perhaps they need to adjust a few things in the seasoning department.

Overall clearly CX has got some work to do in this department considering their high fares in J.

4. Service

This was the biggest issue for me.

Considering LHR is their most important flagship route, the quality of cabin crews (and Pursers) I’ve encountered on these flights were shocking. I purposely booked the front left section of the cabin to see how the service operates, knowing that the Purser also works in this section.

First of all, I was never addressed by name other than the very short greeting from the Purser which they only do half of the time for non-CX Emeralds (understand they prioritise only their own top tiers) and while they take your meal order. The greeting from the purser on one flight was a very curt 3 seconds of “Hi Mr.XXX my name is ABC, just wanted to say hello” then left abruptly before I even got the chance to respond/react - bizarre.

Meal service were all very chaotic, disorganised and I don’t seem to understand in what order they serve meals from the galley, they seem to jump from seat to seat randomly (CX is now trolley-less which means lots of running up and down the aisles which can be a very irritating experience).

The biggest disappointment for me personally was the fact that most crews seem to have no concept of walking normally and discreetly through the aisles even during sleeping times - i.e lots of half sprinting /rushing /stomping around loudly and trying to overtake each other in the aisles while rushing, this was very annoying given the lack of privacy of the seats. It was very painful to watch two cabin crews with full trays of meals trying to rush and go around each other in the tight aisles, next time you know it could be a hot plate of food landing on someone’s head! Not sure if this is normal with CX these days?

One one of the regional flights from PVG the Purser sort of reprimanded one FA for squeezing behind her while she was serving a tray to a customer (in her own words in the galley which I overheard the full convo as was seating on the first row - “next time don’t do that while I’m serving, it is dangerous, this is business class, less rushing and more attention to detail please”). She then later suggested some things for the same FA on “how to interact more with passengers” and gave her some very useful and constructive things to improve all while very clearly audible to the first few rows of the cabin - she probably should have done this more discreetly out of passengers way, I felt really bad for the FA in question as clearly she was visibly stressed - but kudos to Purser for training her and addressing the issues proactively on the spot nevertheless!

Overall CX has got some serious improvements to do in this department, a couple of other observations to recap:

• My partner’s meal order was missed/skipped for some reason and when I flagged to the purser instead of apologising she claimed it was because my partner was “asleep” (which was not the case at all). It was bizarre they didn’t realise about this until after my starter was served and not until I flagged it.
• On one occasion I had dessert missing from the meal tray for the pre-arrival service on HKG-LHR and when I flagged to the FA she went away and brought it to me, without saying a word.
• One the day flight return to LHR the purser working my side brought the cheese and dessert trolley and then just stared at me without a word, few seconds later said “Hi, what do you want?”. Not sure if this Purser was just having a bad day but he seems to be very lacking in terms of basic service skills - note this was the same Purser who greeted me for 3 seconds then walked away before I even got the chance to respond/react!
• Zero proactiveness for beverage refills or offering to ask what you want to drink with your mains.
• Empty plates, glasses not being removed proactively. My partner had very visibly empty plates and glasses for more than an hour, multiple crews passed over, several looked down but none proactively took it away, until we flagged.
• CX crews seem to struggle with the apps they use on the iPads to take orders etc, either it’s too slow or unintuitive to work with. Two occasions where FA stood next to me awkwardly/silently while on one occasion to figure out how to enter the meal order on the iPad and on a second occasion to figure out which Beer they have on board, just very awkward for me (i.e. at least figure it out of passengers way instead of standing silently next to them for 2 minutes while you vigorously tap away on the iPad).
• Lots of “running” around up and down the aisle very loudly with their steps (to be clear I don’t have any issue with aisle activity but rather in the manner and specifically volume in which they do it). Walking/stomping loudly up and down rushing through the aisles rapidly gets very annoying after 10+ hours on a day flight, makes my head spin. To be very clear also I frequently sit on the first few rows of business class so I am used to galley noise and aisle traffic in general however in this case with CX it was very bad.
• On the A359 not sure why the second galley was not utilised? It seems that all meals were prepped from the front galley which made the issue above this even worse.
• Mid flight service for the on demand all day menu was very disorganised for the CX253 day flight. First of all it was very difficult to flag down a crew so I called the button which on the first attempt was completely ignored, took them more than 10 minutes to come to me the second time around. It then took 50 minutes for my noodle soup from the all day menu to arrive (is that normal?). I suspect they had mixed up things and given mine to the passenger in front of me who woke up and ordered much much later than me (same FA peeked at my seat 40 minutes later at my empty table and perhaps realised then). Just seems quite strange given all orders are taken with the ipads.
• None of the cabin crew and Pursers were engaging/willing to interact with you. On one flight HKG-LHR during meal orders I asked the FA a simple “how are you doing?” but she either was not used to small talk, did not want to engage at all or don’t know how to react (?) so did not respond to me at all and just went on to ask what I want to eat. Strange.
• One one of the regional flights Purser served the wrong mains to my partner, FA who took the order then spotted this from the other aisle and started going back and forth with the purser in front of me and my partner (I did not understand the conversation as was in Cantonese, but clearly there was a misunderstanding between the Purser and the FA but in my view things like this should really be done in the galley out of passengers way. They should have taken the wrong mains away and just sort it out in the galley instead of doing it in front of passengers).

5.Amenity Kits

Nothing special about the Bamford amenity kits, it was pretty ordinary with minimal content. Slippers available but no PJs. The mattress topper was very thin but I do like the Bamford duvets, they are very thick and comfortable!

In conclusion - I won’t book CX J unless the price is very attractive or when flying direct to HKG is desirable, otherwise it’s very poor value of money in my opinion and just very underwhelming experience overall considering the expensive fares they charge.