I'll be in Asia sometime next year and one of my goals in life is to experience Cathay's first class lounge at HKG. Is the only short-haul route from HKG that offers first class from HKG to HND?

HND is usually "guaranteed" to have F service. Other intra-Asia F destinations including BKK,SIN, ICN might sell F at first, but you have to bet CX won't swap to J-only service last minute.

Also TPE, the shortest F route.

Only 4 flights sold for F though, out of 20 or so flights daily - not sure what that means with regards to equipment roulette.

Manila has a few with F every day usually as well.

So has KIX F service been officially suspended? I have an used award ticket got downgraded on KIX flight too.

When you get downgraded, do you get compensation of some sort?

Does the JFK-YVR always have F class?

Yes!

Thanks.

Just refund the miles difference between J and F in propotion to the total journey.

What if it's a partner award?

Since my AM OW redemption has been partially used, so the difference of miles between F and J on my OW award would be refunded in pro rata, which is far behind the difference on regular fares.

For Europe, which destination served with F?

LHR, FRA and CDG only?

zrh, mxp, dus?

delete

Europe flights with F are LHR, CDG (only on the midnight depature ex HKG), AMS, FRA, ZRH and MXP.

DUS doesn't have F anymore since it moved to a 359.

Nope.

AMS always uses 77G. MXP will soon switch to 359.

I don't understand how folks dig up a 7 month old post, and then answer incorrectly to boot?

Anyway, this guy isn't totally right: AMS does not have F, not for a while either. It's not a recent thing.

As a smaller quibble, not all the LHR flights have F either. The differentiation the poster quoted makes for CDG is correct but LHR also requires a qualifier. You can find an accurate accounting of what planes /config / flight # fly where at this site we maintain, (and I hopelessly try to get folks to refer to)!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...qK1TjaSS6M/pub

Has MXP been announced? I thought MXP was keeping F on that route?

I retract my message on MXP. Not officially announced.

How's the load factor of F in MXP? What's the chance of miles redemption for upgrade to F?

I thought the next outport going to 359 was ZRH, but I can't find the source anywhere so I must have been mistaken. Anyway, ZRH is one of the worst performing routes across the network now, for a while.

Always full load...hard until instant

I thought the plan was for ZRH to go 359 and MXP to retain the 4 class 77W

My understanding of the ZRH situation is that it is doing very well in J and PY, average in F and really poorly in Y.

Now, this is a challenge with the 77H, but even worse with the 359 which has 214 seats in Y, as compared to 182 on the 77H. So the 359 is no solution for the ZRH demand mix.

This mix is typical for ZRH, other airlines such as SQ experience the same, so airlines usually deploy J heavy aircraft to ZRH, if they have any.

Are there any F routes on CX to the Middle East or Africa ? Can't find any.

Thanks & regards,

El Puerco Volante

No.

If you want to know what planes CX flies where (and, by extension, what products are available where), we maintain a page that has all that information. This is also linked in the top thread on our forum. Fyi "77H" is the only plane in the CX fleet with First Class.

Cathay Pacific Fleet, Route and Configuration Guide

Thank you. The doc gives great overview.

Regards,

El Puerco Volante

Curious as to why MXP has F while FCO don't.

Because the da mas do their shopping in MXP and not FCO.

Does anyone know the reason why SYD doesn't have F?

Hi -

The reason no F to Australia is because they are restricted to the number of flights they can offer, and with no F they can sell more J seats.

CX111/110 and CX161/162 are still served by A330s and change them to flights with F cabin will only increase the J, PEY and Y seats all together. CX had a 77H shortage before but now with a few of them replaced by A359s on certain route....

The reason F isn't sold to Australia is straightforward - F yields are too low and the opportunity cost is too high.

First part of opportunity cost: yield. Have you seen what EK and SQ sell F tix for ex-Australia? In F-class land, they are extremely cheap, especially if you're comparing to cash tix to/from North America. Not in the same ballpark. Australia seems to have about as cheap F class as you can get anywhere in the world, which is saying something considering Australia is a developed country. Great for customers, but not great for an airline like CX. It doesn't serve CX well to take a plane off JFK, LAX, LHR, etc. and divert it to Sydney where they would be lucky to make 1/3 of the money for that F seat. What would you fly to JFK then. 77G? This is, of course, the tradeoff if you want to run one or two daily F-equipped planes to Australia. You'd have to swap one of the existing JFK/LAX/LHR/SFO etc. 77H frequencies for 77G, so SYD can get 77H. That would be crazy!

Second part of opportunity cost (unique to Australia): max # of flights under the bilateral agreement, as mentioned above. There is a healthy amount of Y class demand ex-Australia and the limited slots mean CX must maximize their seats/plane. This is why CX has upped the # of seats by sending 77G and 35G, starting to replace the 33Ks. 77H (the first-class equipped plane) is very premium heavy, which means less total seats. So if you insist on F, you inevitably cut the seats available in Y and PEY for CX. 77G has 268 Y seats and 32 PEY. 77H has 182/34. You get the picture. For a market like Australia, sending 77H is a bad strategy unless you can crush your yields on J and F. And "crushing" J and F yields ex-Australia - especially if you dump more premium capacity in - just ain't happening given what a competitive market Australia already is and low population country.

Very very good point but I don't felt ex-Australia F are that cheap, at least QF never discounted their F product and rarely discount their J product.

I totally agree with not pulling off those 77Hs from premium heavy routes, but what about those 77Hs on the routes been replaced by a359? Just one is perfectly enough for SYD to have daily F service and carry more cargo and PEY & J seats than A333. And, CX can sell SYD-LHR in F then.

Yea, there a valid question about where the spare 77Hs will go if they come off ZRH, MXP and FRA etc. as rumored. So far, the rumors haven't come true except for DUS, which barely had 77H anyway.

One thinking I have is these old 77Ws (all 77H) need the longer form checks. The oldest is coming up on 10 years old. CX might need to roll some out of service for a while.

Another consideration is that CX will announce some 77H increased frequencies or new routes, if they follow through and remove more 77H from Europe. But..........one thing not to forget: in March, CX increases Boston to daily, effectively utilizing the 77H spare frame which came off DUS . I think CX really needs to cut another 77H service if they're to launch a new one. And of course, if they launch a new one, they'd have to explain why SYD....and not LHR, SFO, EWR, etc. wouldn't get it. LHR is running 77G to deal with slots don't forget. With the launch of LGW, it's not inconceiveable that CX could revert one of the 77G frequencies to LHR to 77H. Similar with SFO, EWR, etc. If CX were to go daily on the 3rd SFO flight, perhaps one of the other two goes to 77H. You get my point. F yields to Australia are tough, competition is fierce to that market, it's not a big market to begin with, and to top it off the flight isn't TOO long and 9 hours in CX J is certainly "good enough" even if not ideal.

The final consideration is maybe CX won't swap 77H off those Europe routes after all. In which case, when combined with the upcoming BOS service increase, there aren't spare 77H frames after all.

This question has popped up again and again over the last decade since CX started cutting F to Australia and NZ, and there just hasn't been any sign of reinstating it.

There must be enough reasons for SYD not to have F. SYD-HKG is my most frequent rout with CX and every time I fly, J class always seems full so I thought there might be enough demand for F. And if there is big demand for J and little demand for F in HKG-SYD, we DMs are most likely to be enjoying F at cost of J :D:D

For Australasia it seems to me that there is not enough demand from 'paying' passengers down here (as opposed to upgrades etc) for F. Most businesses would only pay for J, and if you were senior enough to get F, then your firm would probably encourage you to fly on QF or NZ (the latter not even having first class). There probably aren't enough people down here prepared to pay F fares from their own pocket.

Your reply just shows you're missing the entire explanation QRC has kindly offered. CX as a business exists to maximise yield, not to op-up DMs to F from J. A full J is no representation of the demand of F. Companies are willing to pay for extra exorbitant J tixs, but getting F even at a price cheaper than J will get everyone from senior management to auditors hanged, drawn and quartered.

I am sure there is reasons for CX not to have F. The service was took away about 10 years ago, maybe it didn't work out back then. However, there were only 3 or 4 flights to China a day from SYD back then. Look at the traffic now, there are about 20 flights a day to China from SYD, most secondary cities in China offers direct flights to SYD. Both CZ and QF are using A380s during Dec, Jan and Feb. And also if considering all the transit traffic to Europe and NA? I doubt it would be that hard to CX to sell 6 F seats a day for SYD while there are about over 5000 seats sold between SYD and China alone on daily basis.