Bangkok in Business
 

I flew back yesterday from BKK on a short trip from HK.
Good news:
- There are now 5 daily CX flights, all/most operated by A333/A350 longhaul with lie-flat seat. Was lucky to get A350 on both legs.

- BKK lounge is reopen and very similar to pre-covid.

Bad news:
- Service on CX708 was dismal. For a 17:40 departure, no drinks after take-off. Finally got trolley through the aisle bringing trays and seemed exactly like Y service. One salad (no choice), bread and choice of 3 mains on the tray. Then a small ice cream, totally frozen as usual. Very hard to get a refill. With well over an hour remaining, service was finished. Then a FA started passing warm nuts! The seat/screen was great, but service was Y (with slightly improved dish/wine). I chatted with the purser who complained about understaffing, etc. But they still had an hour to mostly chat. If the FAs keep complaining, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

- A first batch of blue priority (business, gold..) was delivered. Then it took 10 min to get a second batch with the red priority (First, DM), some more blue and some non-priority. Weird.

- Fare was twice pre-covid (or up to Feb 2023).

Lucky you. At least you got a decent seat. For Manila we are now condemned to what should be a premium economy seat when we travel in business. Long gone are the fresh orange juice, FT and Economist on boarding. For Manila they no longer can be bothered to peel and sllce the mangoes, just dumping a hunk hewn from the fruit in the bowl. When they come to clear the tray there is no offer of coffee or tea. When I asked at what point it will be offered I was told "now". Most aircraft used for this service do not have Expresso machines. No offering of second glass of ghastly wine which really does not matter any more. Then the flight continues for the remaining two thirds of its duration while the crew hide away in the cubbyhole. I cast my mind back 40 years and remeber a full 3 course service delivered course by course with plentiful drinkable wine. Cut, cut, trim, trim, see how close they can get to Cebu Pacific, Air Asia and Ryanair. And the fools running the business seem to think that this is the basis on which a lifestyle brand can be built.

My wife saw my comment and it started her off again on the difficulty of getting another thimble of champagne on our last flight a couple of weeks ago. Her only positive was that it was not like TG's 787 where the crew decided that she should not look out of the window, blacking the sky out so that we concentrated our attention on events in the little allytube. I fear that CX may decide to inflict 787s on us, having assigned the miserable A321 to MNL for some future flights. I dream of CX and Airbus collaborating to make an A-351 Regional. The 777-300s are getting long in the tooth and while HK may soon have sufficient runway capacity soon there are likely to be regional airports where capacity is tight for the foreseeable future so large capacity aircraft will still be useful.

On my recent J flight from Bangkok, crew were friendly but always rushing. Only one red wine available on the menu and that wasnt of great quality - this sort of penny pinching is ridiculous considering the price but I guess we'll just have to vote with our feet

Spoke to some cabin crew they always encourage members to write in feedback to CX, because their reports are mostly ignored by CX. I even heard that some CX execs are claiming that passenger experience in flight is large positive from the feedback they hear on board.

I got similar experiences previously - when I proactively chatted with the crew, they would mention manpower shortage and ask if I could help them write feedback. I'm always happy to help as long as I have time onboard.

Well, I don't agree with the first post above saying that there is sufficient manpower onboard solely because the purser has time to chat with a passenger... That only happens after meal service. When you compare the meal service these days from that the pre-covid days, you should find out that meal service is just SUPER SLOW after they have "revamped" the meal service flow (i.e. by-hand delivery of trays instead of trolley-style service + moving SP to Economy Class). I was once on an HKG ICN flight in JCL that was fully loaded, and the crew just didn't have time to respond to my call bell during the meal service.

Frankly speaking, if they were still implementing the trolley-style service, manpower shortage would not be a thing; but now, they are trying to deliver a more "premium" service by serving meals by hand, they just don't have enough manpower with the crew: pax ratio being ~1:10...

I flew 8 sectors in 2022 and complain about it every time no matter in Y, J F.
CX's new service flow is trash. Super slow, it's ok on a long haul flight, but not short. (To KHH) I received a meal after "30Mins before landing"

We had trolley-style service on both inbound and outbound.
Handing a tray from the trolley with only a salad and a main dish is quite fast. One more round with the hot bread and with the tray of tiny Haagen Dazs.
Deciding not to have a pre-meal drink service on a flight at 17:40 makes little sense when meal service is quickly finished and they decide to pass warm nuts after the meal service as they have little to do for the last hour.
Even on European flights of shorter duration, BA manages to get better service and more food. I could not believe what was on my tray for such an expensive J flight of 2h40.

There is no cocktail service for BKK (or SGN, MNL etc) due to the 'short flying time'. On request only.

Recently on an NRT-HKG that was blocked at over 5 hours, they told me cocktail/nuts were 'on request' too. I guess next time they can say everything is on request and enjoy their chit chat session in the galley for the entire flight.
With the manpower shortage CX is just not in any position to empower (let alone discipline.... to some extent their jobs are now safer than AA/UA FAs) the crew to deliver any sort of service whatsoever. Perhaps save for the very few remaining 'lifers' around.

The cabin crew are proudly aware that they are here for our safety. We should be grateful they're feeding us!!!! /s

In CX's defence, when something goes wrong, as it did badly when my wife and I attempted to return from BKK in J recently, their proactivity and enthusiasm in fixing things is truly outstanding. The ticket price was circa 10k vs 6k before Covid but the premium is well worth it when something goes wrong. God knows what would have happened if we had been on TG or EK on the same route (admittedly at a much lower cost). And in this case it was our screw up so no obligation whatsoever for CX to fix it, but they did anyway.

Service back from SG last night in J was perfectly decent although food of course these days won't be troubling the Michelin inspectors any time soon. Staffing ratios seemed ok, service was orderly and not rushed (albeit a 3hr15 flight so a bit longer than BKK), walking through regularly, bottles of water etc.. although no nuts or pre-meal cocktails.

Wonder if its part of Work to Rule policy

Short-haul service has been pretty random post-COVID.

Got towel+welcome drink on HKG-TPE, but welcome drink only on return. In a HKG-BKK the same month, nothing for outbound and a welcome drink on the inbound sector.

Trays were delivered by hand on all these flights, with crew randomly assigning bread - for example me getting a muffin and the passenger next to me got a crossiant. And I was asked about selection of hot drinks when meal order was taken on some flights, and on others crew asked separately after the tray was collected.

On another flight from SIN in Y, no ice cream and bread were offered at all for a dinner service.

I know this is for BKKHKG

But for HKGBKK, any more BKK Fast Track for DM/J?

Not buying 787: That's one of the few things CX did right by passengers without qualification. Giving crew control over window shades is annoying, 17 inch seating is worse - I should be allowed to offset traffic fines or community service penalties by 17 inch butt-in-seat time.

JAL use A350s for domestic (they're nice)...what does CX need to change to use A350s for regional permanently?

All J pax are entitled to use fast track for arrival & departure along with a myriad of other bizarre qualifiers, amazing Thailand :D