I was very interested in this change too. I believe something happened yesterday as I had been looking at MAN-HKG award availability daily. I already had seats on a CX358 flight number departure booked before the flight number change but wanted a different date and also a return on CX as I was using another carrier for the return.

Yesterday after I had checked availability before 8:00am UK time with nothing on either date, then by 1:00pm there was wide open availability on BA.com for both dates with the CX216/219 flight numbers. I checked on CX timetable and found both sets of flight numbers from Mid March until end of October.

I still have the original booking for CX358 in July and so far I have not had any notification the flight number has changed.

yea, this sounds more likely. CX and MAN airport made a big deal of increasing by 2-3x weekly frequencies in the last 6 months. Adding an entire daily service with no fanfare? Not to mention, that means they'd be serving MAN more frequently than CDG? Definitely skeptical!

Agree. Even if CX were to add frequency to MAN, it would more likely be a morning departure from HKG and a night departure from MAN just like CX278/279 in CDG. It doesn't make sense to add an extra frequency with almost the same departure time as the present one. Even though there are currently 22 35G, CX shouldn't be that stupid to do this, I guess.

Auckland just has 1.5 million people yet there are 5 flights a day between Hong Kong and Auckland during summer, 3 daily during winter
I would be shocked if Manchester cannot sustain twice daily

Mate, I feel like we go back and forth on the most basic issues. Almost any route can fill more seats than there are seats, especially if you drop price. You're arguing against a straw man.

By this logic, CX could sustain 9x flights a day to SFO, and 15-20x dailies to LAX and JFK each. Obviously.....this logic is absurd.

Yield (price of seat filled over distance, essentially how much $ do you make per sqft of plane real estate per mile) and opportunity cost of the plane matter.

By now, I'm quite clear you think CX/KA whiffed big-time and are way smaller than they should be. Now that that's out of the way, given the # of planes CX/KA actually have (and not how many you'd wish/think they should have), I'd bet CX can deploy that plane more intelligently, elsewhere than doubling MAN seats tomorrow.

Nothing above says anything about whether CX did a smart or dumb or average strategy over the last decade. It's just stating reality about a limited number of planes and routes.

uhhh. okay
I just said that CX expanding MAN would not shock me considering a tiny city like Auckland sustains 5 daily flights....

and to be honest if they did not expand MAN I would not be surprised either...

Looks like it was a glitch and has been noticed by CX now.

The practically wide open reward availability on BA.com (sometimes 12 J seats over both flight numbers) has disappeared overnight and I have an email telling me my CX358 departure has been moved to CX216.

The timetable and booking engine on CathayPacific.com are now only showing CX216/219 for the dates that previously had CX357/358 also included.

HSQ 320 returned with new paint today.

HNQ CX-773Z is in new paint.

Thanks Henry!

Hello all, may I ask if the oneworld livery will be painted on any of the A350-1000s?

I don't know the answer to that but each airline is supposed to have a percentage of it's aircraft in alliance livery. With the repainting of B-KPL and retiring of the A340 CX only has one in a fleet of 128. If not an A35K then they must surely be putting it on something else.

1010101 perhaps 777Xs? I think that will be their flagship aircraft when they arrive.

...that's years away mate.

Admin, CX-KPN (773H) in new paint, please update.