CX Post-Covid
 

I am a former HK-based expat now repatriated in the United States. I flew CX almost exclusively as an elite, mostly premium-class passenger from 2008 to 2018. This evening I went to dinner with another former expat who informed me that CX has reportedly gone downhill precipitously as a result of all the stress the airline underwent during the pandemic. Namely, this friend said that the onboard service was markedly different than before, and that the airline is generally much more like a Mainland carrier than it used to be in 2019. I would like to ask this group: are these descriptions true? And if so, to what extent? Any specific examples?

Honestly when you wind down the airline down to four long haul destinations and then have to restart again, you will get the following:

1. Loss of institutional memory and training
1a. Lots of staff who are green (to varying extent)
1b. Changes to pre-pandemic practices, not necessarily for the better (especially - dining)

2. Revenge travel (I don't think I've been on an empty flight since reopening of travel in Q4 2022, even on off days - so staff are consistently maxed)
2a. Remember this includes Pearl River Delta basin catchment area, as well as Mainland transit

I've taken some AA this year, both in the back and Flagship First, and no way has things with CX sunk to that low.

I also have similar perception in my recent short haul flight. Food in J has really gone downhill and you can see rather new FA serving the front cabin. Having said that, I understand they can't return to what they were overnight. I will take my first long haul J with CX post pandemic, let's see how it goes.

We flew CX a number of times pre Covid in both F and C and really enjoyed it. We flew it roughly a month back from LAX-HKG in C. I thought that food had gone downhill. Otherwise, on a sample size of one, when I was sleeping half the flight, I found the service adequate and as good as I expect in any business class.

I would neither avoid CX nor seek it out and I used to preferentially book it. Now, I will take what makes the greatest sense from an efficient use of time and a cost perspective.

Same here. My time is more important than going out of my way just to fly CX and to enjoy the perks that come with that status.
If queuing at another airline like a pleb saves me 4 hours of travel, I'll be on that airline with no hesitation.

I agree. In my opinion the food has taken a clear step down and the wine has become a joke. Someone has discovered the word curated. It is popping up in almost every paragraph I read. It just makes me think of the curate's egg, good in part. I had one flight where the curator curated one red and one white wine to match the main course offered of fish and chicken. That is really smart, stylish curation. Having said that I still find the customer facing staff, both on the ground and in the air, are excellent. When I have needed help they have worked wonders and when not they are usually much more friendly than those working for other airlines.

First, every single airline pretty much has gone downhill after Covid and catering in general has gone down for most carriers. For European and US carriers, they have only recently been really back to normal level of service. Even Singapore Airlines has gone through a rough patch too but based on many complaints and high airfares, SQ has pretty much forced to bring back all the cutback items like appetizers in economy long haul flights and heartier mid-flight snacks in business for long haul flights. Unfortunately CX has just begun its path to the new post-Covid world. Most folks are really upset because airfares ex-Hong Kong as well as nonstop flights between HKG and certain long haul destinations are very high. We all pay more but get less in return. I agree with most folks here that ground and lounge service remains pretty top notch in Hong Kong, but inflight service is truly unimpressive, Sometimes you are lucky to get more experienced pursuers and crews but there is only so much that he or she can do when it comes to some of the younger F/As, as well as the fact that they still have one less F/A on long haul flights, which result in some slow and indifferent service. What I notice is that CX F/As are no longer smiling and are all working under seemingly a highly stressful situation. The mandarin speaking incidents make all F/As terrified of Mainland passengers and doing things to upset them, and then local HK passengers get really sensitive if they sense that mandarin speaking passengers get preferential service. Then they are all dealing with poorer quality of food especially in premium cabin. The mid-flight snack menu was poor and the pre-arrival meals are also poorer in quality and smaller in quantity. Passengers are constantly asking for food, and they all know that the portion is really too small. On my recent CX 239 HKG-LHR flight, the F/As served the supposedly pre-arrival dinner mid-flight, but that meal was so small that passengers were already requesting noodles and burgers two hours after the dinner service was served. The F/As were serving burgers (ran out of noodles 2/3 into the flight) all the way till top of descend. It was clear that they were stressful. The only person who smiled during the flight was the London-based purser, who has worked for CX for a long time.

In terms of catering, Qatar, ANA, JAL, EVA Airways and Singapore Airlines are almost all good now, and they continue to serve great food. However Cathay Pacific seems to constantly seek the lowest bidder, which results in poor catering in both quality and quantity. Now I hesitate to book CX J unless I get a good fare or CX is a better option like BKK to HKG, where TG is even worse.

The sad fact is that I don't see the light out ot the tunnel yet. Some US airlines like Delta and United are still not returning to the pre-Covid dining experience now, and some Asian airlines like EVA Airways use Covid as an excuse to cut paper menus, which cheapens the premium product.

2023 and early 2024 will remain a volatile year for CX due to the changing operating environment, economy and political climate. Hopefully it will pull it through or else it will just merge into Greater Bay Airlines, as many of the senior F/As tell me privately on how they view CX in 10 years.

Carfield

We flew CX immediately prior to COVID - SYD-HKG-MLE and return. Mostly in J but also a PE leg.

If catering is worse now, I can’t begin to imagine how bad it is, as it was awful then too.

I've done a lot of flying pre and post Covid with a broad range of airlines across all classes. Despite all of the trials and tribulations CX remains an excellent airline IMO. Yes, I would agree with others that on board food is not great but other aspects of the overall product- on ground and in the air - remain great. Hope to see the route network continue to recover.

Show me an international airline that has returned to its pre-pandemic service levels, and I'll show you an airline that wasn't very good pre-pandemic.

Disclaimer: A CX fanboy here, so inherent biases. Also a DM. Likely, & perhaps just like the cabin/cockpit crew, not a fan of the management.

SIN based but in the middle of a (very extended) move to the US.

One who has been travelling a fair bit to/from NYC since Oct ‘21, on a mix of SQ & AA coded QR metal. All J. Just the one SIN-HKG-JFK in CX which was in W.

CX F&B has always been meh (except the garlic bread - the only time I eat bread, and overall views based purely off my CX memory, ie ‘09 onward). Could it get worse- sure, possible.

Quite possibly, I got lucky on those 2 CX sectors- no upgrades, but those flights made for, far and out the best flights I’ve had since COVID happened.

And sure, status helped on this, but my call Center experiences with CX (not the WhatsApp chat), for all the issues that are real and right there, were far better than with AA (Ex Plat line), UA (1K line), and SQ (PPS line). The latter 2, courtesy my wife’s status, and the first one courtesy AA’s system. Aviation is driven by greedflation at the moment (AA wanted $10k to change the return leg of an Asia-NY ticket when I fareclass was available, SQ has this, and UA wouldn’t budge to honor its own published policy on FFC use till I got the DoT to intervene).
All are c#@p. Customer care is nonexistent. But CX still, has done better for me during cancellations/refunds/rebookings
etc.

So far.

I flew Cathay PE for the first time JFK - HKG - PEK a couple of weeks ago. I did this route but onwards to AKL about 4 times return 2018 - 2020.

First Class Wing Lounge is still world class even if it's the lesser of the two previous real first class lounges. Love the cabanas, restraurant and coctails. Food was slightly less plentiful.

Service on all legs was really top-notch. FA's came multiple times to thank me for flying CX which they seemed to do of CX and OW ellites. I also like the a350 PE seat. Amenities are above average for PE and bedding is also above average. Overall happy and proactive crew.

Food was average, no change from pre-covid in my opinion.

Overall, still the CX I remember.

Side note - some of their fares are outrageous ex New York to Auckland.

This pretty much sums up my experience and approach. I used to prioritize flying CX even if it meant less convenient times or a more expensive ticket; those days are gone. Service indeed has gone downhill, and among the Asian carriers one can easily argue that the SQ's and NH's have surpassed CX.

But don't get me wrong, they're still vastly, vastly superior than anything being offered in the US. If you're coming from the US, don't worry about the CX service.

Having now experienced some 16 flights this year I would not say that the food offering has detreated overall but it is still spotty with sometimes poorly made dishes.
An instance was breakfast on last weeks flight ex HKG.
Having breakfasted well in the Wing 1st (good to see the buffet back) all that I wanted was the breakfast fruit side and a juice this more to pass the time than anything.
I had been looked after royally by the ISM and business crew and they took my order first. Unfortunately the fruit was inedible - it had been cut too long and had gone brown plus the plumb was not ripe enough to be eaten.

The ISM checked several meals and they were all the same. Nothing wrong with the fruit quality just lack of attention to the basics in the CX flight kitchen.
I had not considered until then the problem that the CX caterers must be having getting up to speed after 2.5 years locked down and so I had a look-
Needing to rebuild and supercharge the operation almost overnight from a skeleton staff -
Locate and Employ new managers and senior Chiefs
Attract qualified experienced staff ( from an industry that is woefully short of all levels of staff)
Train a large number of new staff -very quickly
Re - connect with old suppliers
Re stock etc etc

To find out more I took a look at the CX inflight catering company available information
Cathay Pacific Catering Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cathay Pacific established 68 years ago
It operates what is said to be the largest flight kitchens in the world
They also cater for 50 other international airlines and normally produce upwards of 30 million meals a year..

They have mastered the cost cutting technique of mind tricking you into choosing the “cheaper” snack menu items as your main meal….why not just list the same snack menu items and disguise them as “mains” in the main meal service.

next time you fly CX J long haul look closely and you will realise the snack items are listed twice….once as a “main” and once as a snack item

I've read and I hope this is indeed a once in a century event (Michael Lewis's Premonition, end of chapter 2) and we don't see another similarly disruptive event again.
(Although I don't think this is the last Coronavirus we'll see. Just hope it's not so disruptive)
How do you ramp down and then back up again as severely as airlines did in the past three years?

I like to think some airlines can endure this better than most - ME3 has laxer labour laws and higher catchment for staff. A bit like cruise lines.

Still they're probably not immune to shortage with local handling - QR and EK is no more immune on lost bags at Australian and UK airports than QF and BA.

Maybe we all need to move towards easyJet/UO/LCCs - less staff, easier to ramp up or down?

I continue to fly Cathay for personal reasons but I am far from typical. One family I know well in Manila consists of 7 adults. They fly between Manila and New York several times a year, almost always in business. They used to always fly with Cathay but due to the deteriorating offering have switched their allegiance to JAL. Cathay's accountants, like most in the profession can calculate cost incurred to the nearest cent but when it comes to calculating the income that is being foregone by penny pinching they are totally lost. This is not a problem while flights are full but when things revert to normal they will lose seriously. Regrettably based on passed behaviour this will then result in a further round of cost cutting, i.e. service reduction. And all the while they dream of being a lifestyle brand.

Grass is greener on the other side https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/japa...l#post35196398

So is JAL https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/japa...ry-2024-a.html

I live here. It's the most convenient O/D carrier.

I won't recommend anyone to make CX a "destination" carrier, or take a detour, just to experience CX service. Not currently, anyway.

The same accounting geniuses who blew billions on idiotic fuel hedging in the mid 2010s!

I agree, but I think all these "small things" added up together will have an impact in the long run. For example, Greater Bay Airlines with its 100+ routes and 18 planes coming in, plus the fact that HK travelers are a lot more open to different airlines now, plus the cost cutting, plus the loss of a destination carrier status, and so on... put together will have a material impact on CX.

Please don't blame the accountants, we hate hedge accounting (CX or any other co). The decision to do any "hedging" is always taken by the "business".

Specifically on this, I noted when I flew CX a few days ago (perhaps eff. 01JUL?), the name tag of FA was changed, and Mandarin is now 普通話, not 國語 anymore. I believe this change was probably made in response to recent political climate and the "carpet" incident. Otherwise, no, I think CX is still the old CX.

I'm a 2m miler on a CX, and I much prefer to fly SQ or QR these days.
CX still wins on lounges, but that's about it.

They had an almost uniquely bad Covid, due to reasons largely outside of their control.

CX post-pandemic has been quite hit or miss for me, more so than before, so I'm not sure I can say they're just like a Mainland carrier. However, in my limited experience "Mainland-carrier level of service" is vastly superior to anything based in North America, so it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Agreed. Depending on the destination, I'm pretty impartial now on whether to fly CX or the "home" destination (e.g. ANA for Japan, EVA for Taiwan, etc).

Sums up all of HK.

As a relatively infrequent CX flyer with fond memories of J trips pre COVID and Pier F etc I was a little apprehensive about a number of trips we have as part of our current vacation. In actual fact had a fantastic crew on a flight from KIX to HKG recently - attentive towards the kids, friendly, frequently checking whether we wanted additional drinks and a great hard product on the A350 for a short business flight.

Maybe having low expectations helped, maybe we were lucky - we have 3 more flights in the next 10 days to assess - but so far, so good :tu:

Now if Pier F opens in the next week that really would be the icing on the cake…:cool:

Have to say its never going to be as good as pre covid. The staff are tired, unhappy and feel abused. The management are living in cloud cuckoo land and dare not put a foot wrong in fear of loosing their jobs. The people in their ivory towers have no idea what is going on at street level because they simply dont feel the need to . The first big drop came, when Steve Miller left to set up Oasis and took a huge number of fantastic staff with him. That was in 2008. By the time Oasis went bust and CX had now started the Mongkok shop girl recruitment programme, it was already starting to show cracks. Then Linda Sim who was head of MPC left, the signs were there of what was really going on at CX. Slowly but surely, nepotism was spreading like wild fire behind the scenes and then the fuel hedging disaster happened and of course no one was to blame for it. This is becasue, we are all family and we will just make the passengers pay. A period of product erosion continued until COVID came and kicked CX right between the legs. I honestly thought the Chinese Government would have squeezed them so hard, they would buckle and become a regional airline under Chinese ownership while the new Greater Bay Airlines stepped in and suddenly acquired a ready to go fleet of planes. When you look at what was happening in the cargo division and the huge number of foreign pilots that left, due to being forced to do crazy quarantine and extra vaccines, it was just a matter of time before the passenger pilots all walked. 650 of them I was told at the time cargo flights were simply not enough to cope with demand. Somehow CX is still flying and obviously using a lot of BS and mirrors to lure passengers back, but its never going to anythng like it was in every aspect of being a customer and enjoying great service.

I totally different view from my own .
The above conclusions re the quality of service etc not supported by recent revues.
So many unfounded and sweeping conclusions above that are not at all supported by fact.
The 650 pilots to which you refer did not walk they were laid-off by the airline due to the pandemic ( as were many hundreds from most major airlines)
The remarks made re the cargo division are a figment of the writers rather vivid imagination as there has never been any shortage of cargo captains most of whom are still 'foreign' ,very few left the airline other than to retire and full service was maintained at both Cathay and Air Hong Kong. Several long serving freighter pilots are family friends and so I know the above as fact.
Of course Air China has owned 28% of Cathay for many years and Cathay has owned a similar share of Government owned Air China and they a few years back both invested in a new cargo airline. It seems no friction there
BTW the GBA 'ready to go fleet to which you refer consists now of 2 aircraft, but the fleet has doubled in size previously it was just the one!

That is true.
People are disingenuous to think CX2023 is the same CX2003 when they were still truely operated by Swire. It's operated by people who are not out of box thinkers but merely followers (not even first followers...). Management don't care nor protect the staff, and you can see if from staff retention and how staff cares about customers. It is even worse that they put their attention in 1 kind of eggs, ignoring their former loyal customers of decades.
In short, a crisis in making. However, this is not the first in the airline industry nor the last. CX is far from the worst airlines around, but is no longer anywhere close to high up anymore.

Honestly, post-pandemic, we should lower our expectations and expect CX to act more like a commodity.
No need for fancy cabins or USP products - leave ME3/SQ/TK to do that.
Just get us from AAA-BBB (or XXX-AAA-BBB) as efficiently as can be, without making us absorb costs from "mistakes".

Looks to me, like you are describing how things "work" (ehhhhh, not work) in an authoritarian regime......

I have flown regional CX (J & Y) a few times since early 2022.
I have found the staff good and the new hires very enthusiastic.
But my complain is the F&B standard in J. Heavy cost-cutting.
I like the new A32Q in Y. Great entertainment system for Y.

Let me add to that, that I am also happy with the crew (in J). Food was also OK, though certainly not more than that.

The first row J in the A32Q is a bit disappointing for me. Pretty cramped, due to the massive/intruding bulkhead.

Noel Philip's review of CX526 HKG-NRT (A350-900):

- Wing got the rating it deserved (but at Gate 24 he doesn't have much choice - not that Deck is that much better)
- I think he's a bit overcritical on the seats - he got a Zodiac FB2. Wait til he gets one of those real regionals...
- 12K cupboard top filth was inexcusable for the first flight of the day
- Yes CX (external) aircraft presentation aren't the greatest
- That wasn't the greatest breakfast (broken skin and a very watery egg plate) (OK I usually avoid the western breakfast on CX flights so I haven't seen one recently)
- Staff forgot his coffee first time (wasn't a full flight)

I thought he was a little overcritical. But then again I never held the expectation of CX that he did.
(I also wonder what kind of choice he thinks he has? If he went on JL736, he'll tear apart the Shell Flat Neo seats)

I also watched his video earlier and genuinely thought he had some kind of agenda againts Cathay. All the stuff he was saying like “it was alright”, “not the best”, “quite good”, “nothing special”, …

then the cracker came when he said Shanghai Airlines and British airways were better…pure ridiculous.

yes Cathay are not as good as they used to be, but they are nowhere near as bad as people are making out.

This was a terrible review. Felt like he already wanted to be disappointed by CX before his flight.

He is spot on really, CX is nothing compared to what is used to be, only in the minds of the bean counters ruining what is left of it.

He said he was disappointed by Cathay 15 years ago, so he was very likely to have a negative perception of Cathay before boarding the flight.
Human can be consciously or unconsciously biased, which is what I felt from this video.
That said, HKG-TYO is already one of the better served routes in Cathay's network - other flights (e.g. ex KA routes) could be worse.
The only major poor showing was the meal.

I don't understand why announcement in multiple languages could be criticised.

It stops the IFE.

Not only the number of languages (in Japan flights it's trilingual), but the length of announcements has been previously commented on negatively https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...l#post27023008

While his earlier reviews were (often) interesting to watch, this one is nothing more than a nitpicking grumpy old man, with disappointing "review" quality.

Good point for announcement duration and content, but I won't complain about multi languages. BTW do they do both Cantonese and Mandarin on Hong Kong - Japan flights?