Wow!! Thank you very much for telling me about your trip on CX!! You have been so helpful!! :)

Thanks a lot
Bluesky

According to the recent posts about CX HKG-LAX-HKG, the inflight Y service are not too good. Isn't it as worst as HKG-LHR-HKG? Pls advise

I don't think any one specific route has better service than another. It all depends on the "TEAM" working on your flight, how they are as a team, how the ISM is towards the team, and the general working consensus. Of course flying with a full load of passengers, and not having enough meals might somehow frazzle even the most competent flight attendants.

Overall most major asian carriers do their best to cater to every passengers' whims and needs. But language problems by FAs tend to sound abrubt and rude to some people when they try to articulate their words across. I've seen this happen many times. Especially when the "chicken or fish" selection doesn't work..

As passengers, and especially us, very Frequent travellers, observe how busy and frazzled the crew might be before we demand to be served right away... always ask, be polite and you'd be surprised how much better your service will be.

IFEs... although CX may not have the AVOD feature that SQ has, CX tend to have more controversial films on and without cuts! Whereas SQ tend to have everything including recent blockbusters.. CX has more Cantonese films and SQ offers more French films. I even saw that SQ even offers Catalan as a language option once. I was duly impressed.

Just my 2 cents..

CX also has more Cantonese-speaking FAs & Cantonese food than SQ as well (Duh!) :D .

Anyways, I agree with GB that language barriers can cause misinterpretation on passenger's view regarding the service. When I flew on CX873 in November from SFO, I noticed that the majority of the FA's onboard that flight were Cantonese-speaking which I assume was to cater to the high volume of Cantonese-speaking passengers whom BTW were also the majority on board that flight. This of course is obvious and I'm not trying to be redundant or anything.....just my comment that top notch airline such as CX do their best to please their customers by having multilingual staff to serve their needs. ^ ^

Thanks. GB. I can imagine how it is!!

I'm assuming you're talking about the Y cabin. I know gear down posted some stats on here recently about F/A country of origins and the breakdown within CX, but from my own experiences I've noticed that a lot of the junior F/As (multi-coloured blouses, for the girls) hail from HKG. I've seen a couple from Japan but none, for example, from the Philippines. Whereas there are a lot of Filipino Senior Pursers and First Class Pursers (and an excellent job most of them do too ^ )

well.. just got off from CX 881 today (arrived on Dec 20),

menu: no (three choices for supper and two choices for breakfast)
hot towels: no
amenity kit: upon request
instant noodle: yes
sandwhich: yes

1. The service onboard was extremely good. In fact i would rate them 9 out of 10. They tried to accomodate every passengers needs for example, they rearranged the seat for the Indian Family (a group of 4) that has spread out all over the plane so that the family can take care of their 2 years old daugher and their mother. The fact that the flight was not full might contribute to their superb service.
I have no idea how could LAX check in agents spread out the family. Stupid and embarassing mistake.

2.There was a child puke when the plane just took off from LAX. The flight attendant took the care the problem in professional manner (e.g show no sign of disgust when cleaning it up) and offer help to the child and the parents.

There is a downside however. (thats why there is a missing one point)
On this flight the IFE wasn't working properly with only the even channels have both the audio and visual availble while the odd channels only have audio. The flight attendant never make any broadcast about the IFE problem which I think they should. When i asked the FA, she just said "Yea.. we knew it"

Did this occur only on your PTV or everyone's else as well?

breakdown in IFE is a common defect on all airlines. imagine being passengers with NO IFE (VS201 HKGLHR and SQ1 SFOHKGSIN) whatsoever. f/as will know of these defects but all they can do is try to reset the system and hope for the best. engineering will try and rectify these problems during transit but once rectified, they can become u/s soon. furthermore, engineering may not attempt to rectify the problem because of limited ground time and not delay the flight as this does not affect the airworthiness of the aircraft. IFE is a very difficult to predict - sometimes it's working like a charm, whereas sometimes, no matter what you do, it just will not cooperate.

service varies on different routes, as mentioned by GB. it also depends on who the ISM is. f/as know who are the good ones are (mainly local female or male.) and the 'bad eggs'. this also applies to the back of the bus. there are gossip galore about fellow crew members in their forums, ones to avoid, and ones to fly with. if you know some f/as personally, then i'm sure you've heard stories about them.
it also depends on how passengers act. a small percentage of fliers are so damn rude they either expect everything ASAP (i've paid full fare and i expect to be served like a king) or do not follow f/as instructions (failure to have their seats upright, questioning that 'shades' be pulled down, as well as other request of a f/a). most of these passengers orignate from one country, but they also produce some excellent passenger.
f/as are not there to be verbally abused at, but to see to the comfort of passengers, and most importantly, their safety. if you want to enjoy your flight, don't be part of that small percentage.

CX now recruits from the Japan, South Korea, Canada, UK, Taiwan and will soon have a bunch of CA f/as on their flights (but not on North Amercian flights). Philippines was used as a recruiting ground in the 80s and 90s because of their english ability, but not anymore.

On the basis of my experience over 700K Club Miles that would be China?
A great shame. Some of the best CX crew in the air are Filipinas.

I've been very lucky with disruptive passengers so far... but the couple of them I have encountered, they haven't been from mainland China. In fact, they're from an entirely different continent altogether. ;)

I really haven't encountered much mainland pax (disruptive & nondisruptive) in all my CX journeys. IMO, most of them tend to fly with other carriers that have connecting flights directly to CAN, PVG, PEK, XMN, etc (CX only has the PEK option for the moment). Oh BTW, I've als never flown that PEK flight.

it's not in asia

SYD-HKG in Y - best options?
 

I'm looking at flights SYD-HKG vv around Easter, and although I'm usually a Star Alliance flyer I would have to pay hundreds of dollars more (and take an indirect routing, which is not always a problem but not desirable for this short trip) to fly *A, so I'm looking at CX, QF or VS nonstop flights. I've never flown CX before, and although I've heard lots of good comments, most more recent reports seem to indicate that CX Y class it not what it used to be.

Anyway, I have a long list of questions below - your opinions / answers / suggestions to any would be greatly appreciated! :)

1) How does CX compare to QF in Y? I'm somewhat familiar with the QF longhaul Y product, so that would provide me a useful point of comparison. Seat comfort and personal space is probably the most decisive factor for us.

2) There will be 2 of us travelling together, and we're both over 6 ft. Should we even be considering CX? I keep reading about intrusive IFE boxes under the seats robbing much of the legroom. (Are QF IFE boxes any more or less intrusive?) If we're travelling together, presumably at least one of us will have to suffer the dreaded box.

3) What is CX's policy about preassigning specific seats at the time of booking - is this possible? And do they preassign exit rows to people with no status like us?

4) On the SYD-HKG route there's a choice of A330 or A340 - are there any compelling differences between the two from a passenger's point of view?

5) How about CX vs VS? I've flown VS once before in Y JNB-LHR in a 343 and found the seat pitch almost inhumanely small. I'm assuming that the 346s they run on the SYD-HKG route have the same pitch, which would make them even less roomy than CX. Any comments?

Thanks in advance! :)

The only input I can provide is:

- Seat pitch: QF is meant to be slightly less at 31" to 32" in CX. How this translates in reality may be negligible. My experience was that QF pitch was not bad for this medium haul daytime flight, but I am average height at 5'11.

- I think the IFE is going to be just as bad on both. Check seatguru.com for locations of IFE

- QF is going to be adding Video on Demand on the Airbus craft. They said January, but I don't know if they met their timetable. If it is in, then I would say its hands-down QF, and you should make sure you are on a flight with the Airbus (I think the 6pm flight is the airbus flight).

- On the airbus, you can also get a pair of seats with no other passengers on either side. Both CX and QF fly airbus to/from Sydney, but they also fly 747s so check this.

- I believe that the CX 340-600 has the newest Y class seats with better under-thigh support and bigger screen. Someone else should verify this as I don't have much experience here. I don't know if CX use the 340-600 on the SYD route anymore though.