Do any of you guys have an idea to when the pier is going to open back ?

I'd be betting definitely by September, when CX reinstate all flights. Hopefully sooner...

Has it been announced that as of 1 Sept Cathay will be back to their pre-SARS schedule everywhere?

I can't wait for the Pier to reopen. I like the Wing, but it can be a bit crowded at times. The Pier is a somewhat far, but seems not as busy. Has anyone checked out the BA/QF lounge? What's that like?

from http://www.cathaypacific.com/intl/ab...-95453,00.html

"The airline plans to restore 90 percent of services in August and operate a full schedule by late September."

It isn't like The Wing but I guess it depends what you need. If what you want is somewhere peaceful to go and work for an hour or two, with phone/net access and drinks/snacks then the BA/QF lounge is fine. But if you want a full meal then it has to be The Wing. The BA/QF is open from (I think) 9am until the last flights go in the evening. It gets full in the evening after about 6pm, but if you go in the morning you will often be the only person there.

Ugh. That sounds a lot like "October" to me.

why would one want to visit a ba/qf lounge if the wing is available to you? more so why did ba bother to build a lounge in hkg?

That's a bit unfair to the BA lounge... It's a lot smaller, but often less crowded than The Wing. It has all the facilities of the Wing except the restaurant and the cabanas... so if you just want somewhere peaceful to work for a couple of hours between 9am and 5pm I would go for the BA lounge, particularly if my flight was leaving from that side of the airport. This is even more true if you only have business class access to either.

I'm sure CX will re-open the Pier when more and more people fly into HKG! Man, I LOVE the Pier and I'll take the tram to it!

Went to the wing this morning and it was pretty packed. Well hopefully all goes well for CX and The Pier opens ASAP. Flew to NRT On 504 this morning and there was not one seat free in any cabin !

There are actually some of us who think a mostly-granite open-air mezzanine in an airplane-hangar environment echoing with flight announcements is a terrible place to wait for an airplane.

BA/QF have a joint lounge that is operated under their joint services agreement for flights between Australia & UK via Asia. Though neither airline operate a through service via HKG pre SARS you could fly from LHR and connect in HKG to PER, BNE, SYD, MEL and not too long before that CNS. The connection was quite good, only a couple of hours and the route flown was actually the shortest time in the air for Australian East coast destinations.

Pre SARS BA operated 2xdaily 747 and QF operated 2xdaily services to SYD & PER and daily 767 (at least) service to the other Australian destinations (except CNS).

So with this, around 8 departures a day between them the economics made sense to go with their own joint lounge rather than pay CX to lounge their pax. The joint lounge opened pre OW iirc.

Also considering BA and CX compete on this highly profitable and volumous route it makes sense for BA and CX to differentiate their products at either end.

Has BA restarted nonstop flight(s) to HKG?

Yes, at least three weeks ago.