Oh damn. That's really sad to hear. I'm flying CX 254 next Monday. Hopefully they have better service than that.

On HKG-LHR, they have the pasta option and the two breakfast ones but it's even more ridiculous as it is on a flight that lands into LHR at 20.30!

Also, I really hate that habit of CX to serve the second meal about 5 hours before landing on day flights, which is usually also very shortly after you barely finsh meal no 1 whilst it leaves you starving upon landing and tired as you then don't get any chance to sleep properly. Why on earth do they think it's a good idea??

Not wanting to derogate your opinion, though do you really want to eat a full, copious diner at midnight ? Right before night set and go to sleep ?
I assume, you do not starve yourself to near death, during the day and as such craving for food.

One of the biggest nowadays "diseases" is over eating. Assuming, you need 2200 Calories a day, I do think, you largely collected that during the day, ie, before departure. Adding another 1000-1500 Calories with a diner would not be that healthy (not to speak about the calories coming with the alcohol).

Could it be, the whole complaining about "smaller" meals, is more about "When it's included for free, and I do pay a lot for my ticket, I want to get as much as possible" ?

To be honest, I do have the impression, items like limiting jet lag effects and increasing general well-being after a LH flight are also related to reducing copious amounts of food and alcohol :D Not to say, when over-eating/drinking at home, it doesn't feel well either, the next day.

Even when I stay in a lounge for a long time, I largely refrain from overindulging, for both food or alcohol. I prefer to feel well AFTER arrival. All lounge consumption is "included", though, though I don't eat/drink (much) more, than at home .....

I disagree that BA is worst on this route. I took them recently from LHR, and the quality and quantity was above average. It's true that they don't have hot snacks between meals, but the noodle snacks on CX are pretty awful (packet noodles with no "bite").

I honestly really don't think so... BA's catering has been taking up a notch lately.

and the second meal is still a hot breakfast..? did they change that very recently?

But yeah, in terms of snacks, BA does lag with their club kitchen (not really any hot snacks) but on red-eyes I don't anticipate getting hungry anyhow (unlike taking CX257 which is a looong flight even in J).

I agree that BA J has good food ever since they revamped their service. Scrambled eggs on CX are also powdered anyway...and the crew have been complaining to remove poached eggs from the new service (the last time I had it, they were indeed good and tasty.) I feel like most if not all airlines just don't do well for breakfast regardless of the cabin, so the main meal is more important...

BA27 which has a similar flight timing as CX254 serves a full dinner after take off if I am not mistaken, so no excuses here for CX.

The only issue I have with BA is their service is equally slow and disorganized as CX new J, and then they don't even try to stroke my ego...but the service delivery is more consistent than CX overall. (CX LHR base crew shine like rockstars, the HKG base not so much)

Most if not all other evening (but not late night) departures departing at similar times have a full meal - on top of my head CX 636, CX 865 (889) and CX 161 etc. Besides the sun is just setting at 10pm in Europe in the Summer and many Europeans do eat dinner at this time of day!

This is CX business class and 53 pax will likely have different needs - some would have eaten at the lounge sure but some may be coming or connecting from afar and there's definitely enough time to have a full meal, a full sleep and a full breakfast for a 12 hour long flight. The issue of this 'supper' is it is really anything but a premium service, chicken strips with rice or a chunk of grilled fish as entrees and that's it? A steak item would be welcome (and there often are, at least in old J, even on midnight 'supper' services), like what has been posted above wrt BRU-HKG. It is not about whether everyone wants to maximize or not, but there should always be the option given the premium CX charges (and pax can also opt out and go to sleep instead.)

Maybe you can work for CX management and propose that eating too much is not good for your health, let us only serve light snacks or nothing after takeoff. Cost center is happy, crew are happy!

Yeah, some months ago, I did an Intra-EU flight BA J, and the food was not that bad, to use a British understatement.

Yeah, the one who invented those powdered eggs should be locked up for life.......

Don't forget the political motivated choices, where food evangelist do ponder airlines for healthy food. Unfortunately, healthy food seldom comes with good taste. Only healthy food evangelists proclaim the contrary.

Yeah, here we have the main reason, showing off, flying F/J qualifies for copious amounts of free food and alcohol, and the meals should reflect that reality. :D


Yeah, Europe below the Dutch/French divider in Belgium do eat later in the evening, though the northern part sticks to more moderate diner timings.

Regarding your timings, BRU/AMS and as far as I do know, most ex-EU single day departure flights to HKG do depart around noon and offer a light meal, 1 hour after departure. Whether that is called "lunch" or "light meal", I don't mind.

Certainly, everybody has different preferences. Being one of the 53, I am not the person to "eat"/"drink", because it's available or to show off. :D

I think, you mix up the "amount" of food and the "type" of the meal, with the factual qualification of the ingredient items being served. I agree with you, that the served items do lack a finishing touch now and then, so to say, be it sufficient herbs, spices, etc, or even sometimes the basic ingredients can be hit or miss. Though a copious "diner" can have the same bad basic ingredients as a "moderate" supper. To be honest, I prefer to eat a decent steak in the lounge and have a lighter and simple meal later on board.

Whatever you do with food, it's a real challenge to bring a proper taste high up in the sky, just the physiology isn't there, it's reheated, rush served, etc. Food that tastes proper on the ground, will miss the flavor, herbs, spices, etc high up in the air. Compensating these items with "extra" creates other internal body problems, though other airlines do sometimes manage to get this better than CX.

If there is one area, CX should improve, is the transformation of the "on ground" being perfect to being perfect "in the air" for the food. This is not so much of a "costs" aspect, but knowledge. Let us see, how things do develop for the new style diner experience, the upcoming year.


Sorry, I am already to busy :D

Apart from that, there are already enough people proclaiming the healthy food-style, though only forming a minority of the (flying) public, despite that pushing their personal agenda onto airlines. But that is how it works, nowadays. If you don't keep the political evangelist happy, get you a lot of bad press.

Given CX obviously miscalculated the required effort to process the new diner style in the current manual administration form, so some things had to go, to avoid meals stretching out to long. And I can imagine, LH product management at CX told their food department: "We gave you this budget with this staff: Work with it, solve your own problems"......

Having back a nice starter would be nice, though. The soup is also highly appreciated. And for me, skip the heavy main meal and serve something nice and small.

I also do not think, the CX eggs are power based. If it would be, then the result would be the watery, snotty, lumpy stuff you get sometimes at other airlines. The CX eggs do seem to be made from "liquid" egg containers, "baked" in an automated oven, in the home CX kitchen and just heated up in the air.

There’s a video from 2014 on YouTube about CPCS’s catering operations - in one of the segments, they were showing CPCS’ “tailor-made” rotating egg station. I’m not exactly sure how powdered eggs look like, but that surely doesn’t look like powdered eggs to me.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f95fef8e17.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a1f0007d20.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e6e508bbe1.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8a230cabc0.jpg

It's an interesting behind the scenes look into CX even if you don't understand Cantonese and have 20 minutes to spare.

Source:

I arrived into LHR from a EU BA connection that was awful so starving when I hit CX254 , joy of a burger for dinner....I skipped the brunch on Thursday night as it was effectively a breakfast, thought i would eat in the lounge on my 3 hour connection to AKL. Silly me, Sodexo provided me with stale bread and mini bites of cheese (no chutney, also why is Gruyere even on a cheeseboard it should be melted???). If you do not want noodles in the lounges in HKG you are stuffed. The buffet was a joke. Arrive on to AKL service which is struggling with the new service. Wrong meal/drinks brought to me. No juice on breakfast trays no jam for croissant. Tablecloths laid for 30 minuted before food arrived... I had to eat a McDonalds on arrival 😂

My first experience with the new service LAX-HKG CX883 last week. Wow, felt like I was on UA. The trays are unbelievably tacky, the choices weak. I had the "spicy shrimp" and they were not spicy at all, just four shrimp in a sweet gloppy tomato based sauce, with no side. And no cheeseburger for a snack.

It's not like CX catering before was anything great, but these cuts have really diminished my enthusiasm for CX longhaul. Especially with the increasingly tired 77W hard product. Just wish NH had a nighttime departure from SFO, their food is SO much better.

Reading this thread is to read a thread of business traveler horrors.

I haven't yet tried the "new service". At this point I'm intentionally avoiding it.

I haven't tried the new CX dining after delays in rolling EWR / JFK out, but I did UA Polaris this weekend and it was actually decent.

Do however agree the grass is greener - just as I thought HX J was bad, I had AC J this weekend as well and for the entree I actually prefer CX Y's western...I'm sure new CX J can't be worse.

Does anyone know if 254's change to supper affect F as well?

Actually, a tech firm has spent a lot of effort to realize the tacky surface and CX pays significant money for this tech feature.

It's there, to avoid that the Chinaware goes to China, when it gets turbulent and/or when a FA makes a sudden movement with the tray in hands. :D

Yeah, the non-spicy, restrict to natural flavor only, is a thing CX should work on. Though, please CX, do not use the artificial industrial flavors, one gets served in FF restaurants to beef up the paper based stuff you get there. Natural herbs, starting with Salt & Pepper, Chili sauce and the like, are the way to go.

Regarding the cheeseburger: Did you ask for a cheeseburger, of for a Beefburger, that comes with a slice of cheese ? Was it on the menu anyhow ?

And the Fries should come with mayonaise, drop the ketchup .......

Ex-USA there's no burger for this season and possibly into the future. Don't ask me why, ask Ed and Kim

Wow I'm surprised you haven't got a hold on it yet :) the rollout will be complete by August 2019!

There are several airlines who have stopped using trays in business class, setting the cutlery and plates on a cloth laid directly on the table. Even on CX, they do this in First Class; ultimately it's about manpower or the lack of it. Let's not pretend its solely about safety and turbulence.

Isn't it on rotation? A few years ago I remember seeing quesadillas from the west coast back to HK.

Quesadillas is too premium for J class, that's left for F only :D

For new J - the burger ex USA has been replaced with some sort of pie for now, as usual, CX loves fixing things that are not broken!!!

^^^^

I'll add as well that CX has managed to completely overstress its FAs, too. They practically run down the aisle trying to provide timely service. It's an interesting cultural difference with American crews, who just serve at their regular pace, even if it means you wait three hours for your meal.
I think you're joking, but will add nonetheless that many other airlines use trays in business class. CX's is the cheapest looking I've seen.

Fortunately I'm flying less J, more F. Sadly, I have moved much of my business away from CX. It's bittersweet. But I'm really enjoying the experience on other carriers. And this new CX J food service rollout sounds dreadful! They had good intentions to fix one the worst element of CX premium = J class catering, but those intentions get obliterated by cost cutting and bureaucracy and actually makes things worse. It sounds worse now. I'll take 1 or 2 max CX J long-haul flights this year. Maybe 0 even! I'm still flying plenty of CX/KA J and regional F when available, although I think a strong case is made to buy 2 seats on the KA A330 instead of the dreadful regional J, but that's another topic. Meanwhile I've avoided CX F longhaul, except 1 flight when I had no choice, because I'm trying to boycott N. America routes this year due to this mistake fare. I'll return to flying (to anyone at CX listening: I'll return to paying cash for) more CX F next year to N. America once this mistake fare situation is over.

One permanent change I've made is my daytime Europe flights (2-3x a year) go to Emirates F. No more CX279/8 which I've done in the past, or this new Frankfurt flight. Nighttime to Europe, coming up I have Air France F booked one way and a BA F return, as bad as BA may sound to the forum. (to anyone interested, AF F is superb, especially when you transit in Paris). And apparently we saved 4k USD on my F ticket buying BA vs CX, I haven't done BA F in some time, and CX is in my doghouse. To North America, I've already done a round-trip to SFO on SQ and a one-way on JAL to JFK. I have another SQ "round-trip" booked to SFO / back from JFK. SQ ex-JFK via Frankfurt sounds fine, especially since I can add Singapore meetings at the end. Apparently they have the suites on that one so I'm sure it will be quite pleasant. SQ regular F isn't as comfortable as CX F, but I've found the service to be less variable and the galley party problem doesn't happen. Overall flying different carriers has been fun, and CX has bled quite a bit out of their loyalty out of me with actions that piled up over the last few years. I think what I'm trying to prove is how aggressively I have diversified my business without too much effort.

I cannot avoid CX. I easily will hit 1,600 miles each year. But my loyalty and appreciation is not what it once was. I think I might fly a few J class longhauls if the feedback here on the service was great, but I don't need to unless scheduling demands it. Given the the thoughts from posters I respect above (including yours!), I don't see a compelling reason to fly this new CX J service if not necessary. It sounds like a downgrade not an upgrade.

Yes, maybe CX would like to do so to, though did you ever have a look at the size of the LH J class table ?

It's to small to comfortable put cutlery, plates, glassware, etc on it. So, yeah, there is a reason one gets trays with CX.

And yes, I once tried to put the tray aside, put all items direct on the table and found out myself, what I write :)

Why do you think, there is a table cloth underneath the tray ? Ever thought about the tray departing the table ?

I agree with you on the over-stressing. I think, this is largely due to the whole meal administration being completely manual, a post-it one ....
Suppose, for half of the servings, something is forgotten, it'll require double the amount of aisle run-downs by the crew than minimal required.

No, see my previous post. There are practical limitations, which does force CX to the choices, being complained about.

The new tray has been reduced in size and from what I recall it doesn't even cover the entirety of table as before, hence I'm pretty sure there is ample space for everything on the newer tray to be placed directly on the table.

That's why I think your earlier argument about trays preventing the chinaware form going to China is incorrect because the tray can easily slip off the table because of the table cloth during turbulence.

Just got off the 27th CX254 flight. A pleasant surprise was that I missed the breakfast service and they still brought me food 35 minutes before landing. Dinner wasn't too shabby too. I noticed that the FA was still using pen/paper to jot down who's eating what - I thought they moved to tablets? Also, no sign of the breakfast sheet that you hang somewhere ...

Not sure if this were the exception, but, on my DUB - HKG last week (usually in F, but only J on this route), there seemed to be an abundance of burgers. Matter of fact, the person to my right had the burger for dinner, and then 2 more later during the flight, as with the person in front me. While the food was average, the FAs on this flight were excellent, especially the one assigned to our section. This was one of those flights where most Pax held the view that the FA call button's intended purpose were to request whatever is required during the flight, e.g., water, snack, burgers, drink, etc...and the FAs, unlike the NA FAs, didn't seem to have an issue or show any frustration.

Is that not the job of FAs? I wouldn't be too happy seeing a FA getting grumpy because I asked for a coke/burger/etc... Especially in J.
​​

Personally, I couldn't agree more and never hesitate to use the "call button" when necessary. But, in NA (America anyway), we have a bunch of articles impressing on pax to make the lives of FAs (not to pick on them, but, we have similar like minded articles for maids, waiters, and whatever other service staff) jobs easier. While I ignore any such rubbish, we, in America, have a rising generation who actually take these articles to heart.

So, you have these NA FAs whose unspoken rule is to only use the call buttons in case of near emergencies. One reason why I tend to avoid NA based carriers on long haul flights.

Well, eating is the proof of the pudding, so why not give it a try, next time ? I personally did feel quite uncomfortable, when I had removed the tray, though YMMV.
Please report back.

Well, eating is the proof of the pudding, remove the cloth and see how stable the tray has become.
Please report back.

The core of science and knowledge is investigation. If it works according your ideas, please post and we all demonstrate to CX, they got it wrong and how it should be done. :D

Not on CX254, other EU destination, though I did have a similar experience, waking up some 40 minutes or so before ETA and I still go my full breakfast without any grumble, and even better I got it offered spontaneously.

Maybe, they have internal records of me, being a nice guy towards CX ;)

The table vs. paper/pen: It was me who reported that, based on my interaction with the ISM, though it would be introduced early may on the HKG-BOS flight. Though, they also did have tech issues, because the table got out of range of the on board service network and the FA does have to go back to the galley to let the table re-sync, etc. I forgot to ask whether this application would be an "on-line" (ie GUI only on the table) or an "off-line" one (ie some intelligence on the tablet to temporary store the input). Sorry about that. Let me try to get to know that next week or so :)