Interesting. I personally have never waited longer than 15 minutes for The Arrival showers, and in that case they're almost certainly faster than the somewhat frowned upon method you're discussing. I did read another fellow say he once waited for an hour, which is nuts. CX has gotta do something about that. Totally defeats the purpose of arrival showers.

Cathay Boy, I don't think it was explained clearly. Immigration will be properly cleared each time. Someone from CX or security personnel will escort the airside (departure) passenger to a side door and elevator, which brings the passenger downstairs to arrivals. Once downstairs on the arrivals level, that passenger will find himself in the flow of arriving passengers, and still must clear immigration before being allowed into HK. And, in order to return to the airside (departure) section, he/she will need to go back through exit immigration. In my experiences doing this, CX tries to ascertain your reason for leaving and the implication is this is not something to be abused.

Basically, what happens if your plans change after clearing immigration but before you board your flight? This is the method to exit the airport. I've done it once or twice myself (out of hundreds of departing flights from HKG), although I had personal issues arise unrelated to lounge hopping. So I have no doubt it's feasible, legal and available to be (ab)used in the manner susiesan mentions. I just hope it doesn't become prevalent because the proposed reason is not why this safety valve exists. I have also heard of more egregious abuses, guys who buy a J or F ticket, go airside, hang out in the lounge all day for free grub, and then cancel their ticket. The way they exit the airport is in the manner described.

The Arrival is usually quite empty. I used The Arrival about 30-40 times in early mornings, and there was only once there was a waitlist for shower. I would say you will spend 20-30 minutes more if you use the Wing.

ditto for me.

I'm with others on this... head for the arrivals lounge.

You'll save time not clearing security to get back to the Wing and you'll save time and bother to the staff asking them to escort you back out from the Wing to immigration.

You can also store your luggage at the arrivals lounge (which is more or less directly under the train to the city).

With a scheduled arrival of 7:40 am is the arrivals lounge very busy at this hour? I was using the info on this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/catha...lways-zoo.html

Is there an easy place to see how many CX arrivals there are at any given time? How many shower stalls are in the arrivals? My husband and I can use the same one if it is crowded so as to speed up things. Are they big enough for 2 people to be in at the same time like the cabanas are?

The situation as in that link is quite unusual. I sometimes stayed for a while before entering the City. There were few people at 8am in my recollection. Of course, if you are really unlucky, you may have to wait. IMHO, the showers are for one person. There are about eight stalls (I think).

If you like to spend more time in the City, you may not be able to use the cabanas anyway. I seldom had to wait for the cabanas before Wing F remodeling, but with now... there was only one time I do not need to wait in the past year (and for that time, the person behind me was on waiting list already - I was ahead of him by about 10 seconds).

Er, no. You really need to educate yourself on the difference between customs, immigration (and emigration) and security.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B142 Safari/8536.25)

In practice, no problem

The problem is ur wait at the wing (showers/cabanas and wait for escort) may or may not be longer than the wait at arrivals.

After reading hundreds of posts I'm glad you finally found a chance to come after me with this one. Was it worth it?

I always find it fascinating that "F fliers" have so much time roaming around here going after another poster every chance he/she gets. Don't you guys have much better things to do, like run a company or something?

This is extraordinary service (escort) to provide. I'm not sure I'm glad CX provides it or not, I guess it's worth it for those that truly needs it....

Personally I have e-channel and I find HKIA very efficient that if I need to run into town for a couple of hours and back, I just use e-channel out (5 min.), go out, do my business, come back, and go through security and e-channel back in again (never more than 15 min. tops).

If you are frequent traveler to HK, e-channel is a MUST.

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Echannel was great today. Had time for a glass of bubbly, grab a paper and help out someone w/ a survey (about tourism to HKG) before my friend made it thru the traditional visitors line.

Echannel is a must, and it makes going in and out of HKIA very smooth. HKIA has a wonderful security line that are always well-manned and efficient (unlike USA Terminals where usually only 1 of 5 security lines are open, and horribly manned and the agents only stood there and yell at you with no assistance whatsoever.)

Can I use echannel as a one time thing? How do I sign up? Is it free?

If you are MPC Silver, Gold or Diamond you are qualify.

If you are not don't despair, if you have traveled to HK 3 times in any three month period you are qualified to apply for e-channel good for the year.

First time application used to be able to do it before customs, but now they moved the office behind the customs. So you need to do the paper.form first, passed the customs, go to the e-channel office (it's really just a cubicle), and hand them your passport and show them you qualify (either with MPC card or show them passport stamps that you are frequent traveler).

If there are no line in front of you it's fairly quick. But last time I did that there were 4 people in front of me, took awhile....

As Cathay Boy explained it's free if you are MPC Silver, Gold or Diamond, or if you travelled to HK 3 times in a year. However you need to sign up first which is done after going through immigrations in the Arrivals Hall, so to answer your other question, no you cannot use it for a one time entry.