BNE and Perth are performing well as you can see CX predominantly uses 77W for these routes. Those that not performing well are the mainland Chinese airlines which are dumping capacity and do not have as much connecting traffic.

I think he was talking about carriers in BNE generally. UA canned LAX-BNE after one season which was cut short and barely averaged 50% LF according to simple flying. DL and AA are having a go right now.

Currently sat on CNS-HKG and it's pretty much a full house up front. The inaugural on the way down was about 80% full so at least CX is doing better than the Americans haha. Don't know about yields though.

I think BNE demand to the rest of Asia and mainland China etc. is high so it's not a problem for CX. They even increased to 10 weekly.

It's just most of the subsided routes from NA doing badly, and that CNS is also in Queensland, and CNS didn't do so well pre COVID, not sure whether these subsidies would be successful, though I hope it is.

I didn’t expect CX to send a 28J/265Y 333 to Australia. Is this the longest CX route without PEY?

That is indeed the longest CX route without PEY. With that said, CX probably does not have many 330 with PEY (i.e., 33K) nowadays. Probably one or two in the fleet?

Once HK side of the AU slots are allocated, I will expect both Perth and BNE to go 14 weekly.

I get your point, but given it’s just a 3-weekly(?) service, I suppose it is not that difficult to schedule the 33K to CNS with one spare 359 just in case. Even SIN gets 33K sometimes.

HX just started hiring B787 pilots. believe HX wants to do SYD. if cathay doesn't add frequencies to Australia soon, the slots might be taken by HX. maybe 4th daily to MEL to rival SQ, and double daily to BNE and PER seems logcial.

and that probably also means SFO, LAX, YVR etc. would have another bloodbath like pre- covid, especially if HX sells cheap tickets. wonder what cathay would do to respond

Has anyone heard anything about Cathay potentially reintroducing their second daily service to Auckland next winter (NW25)?
Pre-covid, from November to February CX had a second daily service to Auckland which used to be quite popular ex-AKL because it had much better connection times to intra-Asian destinations. Considering SQ is able to go triple daily to AKL and double daily to CHC, it looks to me that there is more than enough demand from NZ, especially since a large volume of those travellers are connecting onwards (A lot of the traffic connecting to Asia). I think Cathay probably would be thinking about starting the second daily service, the only issue I see is that they are starting a fair few new services over the next year and they are not receiving any new aircraft for a while, which might mean that they don't have the resources to restart this route.
Does anyone have any clue about this?

I don't think it's necessarily a lack of aircaft, but rather (deliberately) poor utilization, particularly on the A330 fleet, likely as a result of a continuing crew shortage. If CX wanted to free up some frames for long haul, they could easily put the A330 back on some Middle East and Australian frequencies.

Any competition is welcome, but I don't think an airline that can't even afford to pay to keep the IFE on can be regarded as a serious competitor. There's no comparision in terms of network/alliances and freqencies for starters, let alone the quality of the product. I believe what HX is trying to go after is mainly transit passengers from Mainland China, fed in by HX, due to the lack of frequencies to NA from China. It may result in some promotional activity but I don't expect it to affect CX in a material way, especially in premium cabins.

True, the A350 and 777 fleets have definitely been flying a lot of short to mid range flights, where CX definitely does have enough A330s to operate these routes with. As we know, Cathay operates a lot of A350s and 777s to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Dubai, Riyadh, as well as a lot to Japanese cities. It would help if they freed up a lot of these aircraft to operate long-haul routes, for sure.

HX is restroing IFE and hot meals soon. I believe the B787's come from hainan airlines who have a decent product.

i think CX not sending A330's to really important routes that are 10 hours or less such as SYD, MEL, NRT, SIN, KIX and much more might be a strategic move, as these routes have high frequencies and competition, and B777s and A350s just have way better products and comfort than the A330s and this would leave a good impression in most flyers. 9 hours on an A330 to SYD is pretty miserable, glad that has been gone after covid. a lot of asian carriers send really nice planes to regional places too, so until the A330s are refurbished or A339's arrive, I don't think this is changing anytime soon.

Been on HX a couple of times this year (SH) and they were serving hot meals.

I don't agree with this. The 359/35K are my least favourite in the fleet in LH J, due to the location and configuration of the lavatories (front lavatories being right in the cabin rather than in the galley area) and the bulkheads not having larger footwells. 333s have the same exact cirrus reverse herringbones, only from a previous generation with better padding, and with 11A being a great seat. Not miserable by any stretch.

i think 359 J iterations have few minor touches around seats. paddings are similar. IFE especially screen is decade apart, for me i often just sleep so not a biggie.