The Lynch Bages is back?!?!

(Yet only one western entree choice and no vegetarian, interesting).

Interesting read even though it went a little by OT. I suspect F will stay on high yield routes like US cities and LHR where a lot of revenue seats are actually sold. I agree that revenue management could do more to increase overall yield and encourage more F/A paying customers. It does make sense to give 1 or 2 seats for redemption particularly now that F award are relatively expensive (thinking 100k + most routes) and would be difficult to achieve without a fair amount of flying/CC spend.

The big issue for me is these absolutely absurd credit card bonuses that US based people get!! These bonuses are marketed over lots and lots of blogs making big stacks of miles easy to achieve for your average joe who is neither a frequent flyer or a big CC spender.

Redemption tickets are not in my eye a problem if someone has earned those miles as the number of people able to achieve them would be relatively small and they would deserve it.

This has been discussed ad nauseam in numerous forums. Certainly it's possible that bonuses could get lowered over time. That side they also may not; frankly airlines have become addicted to the crack of credit card companies buying points from them and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Regards

I'm doing this in November to LHR, returning via HND on JL then to HKG on CX.

I'm actually very excited about JL F, it would be my first F outside CX in years.

I'm surprised that even booking almost 300+ days before, I couldn't get the flight I wanted so I had to move back my trip by 1 day.

Enjoy the trip! I tried JL F for the first time in September and was seriously impressed. Much better than CX, SQ and even NH in my opinion. It's a shame that Japan is situated so Far East or I would try use them for all Asia trips.

I know CX has been a hit or miss when it comes to service, although from my experience, if the service is good...it's like over the top good.

Yeah I love CX F too and it is probably the carrier I fly F on most regularly. When it is good it is really good but trust me JL F is a step above even CX on a good day ;)

So I had a LAX-HKG rt F flight and on my LAX-HKG I had amuse boushe! What do you mean it's gone? HKG-LAX didn't have it though 🙁. Also, people who are redeeming AA miles really don't need to read about how the service "degraded", me included.

I've flown JL a couple of times on J and domestic F and although the service is impeccable, I feel its a little bit too mechanical and rigid for me. With CX I kinda like the balance specially when you meet the same crew on board.

The food (and DRINKS, by farrrrr!) blow CX out of the water.

Of course....Food and Drinks (although I'm not really a big drinker on board) Oh and the amenity kit!!! way better than that box from Aesop.

I'm curious too. I flew JL F once, when they used to operate JFK-GRU, probably around 2000.
i found the service a bit overly formal and robotic. The formality was probably at least somewhat cultural.
I remember a crazy cheese cart, but otherwise don't remember the food being anything special. No recollection about the drinks. (Mostly I was jazzed about my first flat bed experience...lol)

I'm sure things have changed, and obviously Salon is expensive... :) Would love to try it out again.

Last month I had the opportunity to compare CX F (LAX->HKG) vs JL F (NRT-LAX). I have been in CX first class on long haul several times (LAX <-> HKG), but this was my first time in JL first. Both were quite enjoyable. I didn't find one clearly better than the other; more that CX and JL are just different.

CX had Johnnie Walker Blue. JL had Suntory Hibiki 17. I really liked the Suntory Hibiki 17. CX needs better wine though. I didn't try any wine on JL.

As far as amenity kits, the Loewe amenity kit provided by JL didn't seem clearly better than the Aesop kit from CX, not that any Amenity kit would be a deal-breaker for me.

The food was better on JL, a little more privacy in CX due to fewer passengers in the cabin. Both had comfortable seats/beds. JL offered the opportunity to select firm/soft bedding cushion.

The flight attendants from both airlines were very good.

Choosing CX vs JL first class should come down to routes, schedules, and price/miles. Most people ought to be happy with either.

+1 I totally concur. And either airline highlights what an embarrassment AA and DL are in comparison...

Why CX continues to have poor F&B in its premium cabins?

We have flown QR a lot in the past couple years. Dare I say the foods in QR J (they only have J between DOH and US) is a lot better than CX F, despite QR does not offer Caviar which neither of us ordered on our HKG-LAX 884 2 days ago.
The menu on 884 looked quite mediocre - The Western side had a panfried prawn, and a pasta dish which I assume pretends to be vegetarian dish. The Chinese side had "Onion Duck" as the main, dried giblet / winter melon soup and smoked fish. I had the Chinese soup, smoked fish and the Western panfried prawn - all were mediocre, especially the soup which was greasy - you can see all the tiny oil droplets floating on the surface - a big no no for high quality Chinese cuisine... The smoked fish was dried and did not taste the way it should be, plus the color was not right - instead of dark brown, it looked reddish. The prawn was in good size but dry and tasted too salty. The wildrice that came with it was very dry. My husband slept thru the most of the flight and only had some congee 30 min before landing.

We were the only 2 passengers on 884 so the crew had a very easy time.
We hit some serious turbulence on the last 3 or 4 hours of the flight. A half-full waterglass fell over and splashed water all over husband's duvet. The crew came over as soon as the turbulence subsided some and refreshed his bed.
I watched movies the whole flight, they did come up to check on me from time to time and brought me fresh tea without me asking.

Overall the service was very casual, friendly and adequate but definitely not anything over the top. That probably had a lot to do with our origin and our totally undemanding nature. The crew did not have the pressure to put on their best efforts.