I think you may have an overly narrow view of who pays for F. I do, but for hotels I choose places like Hampton Inn or Holiday Inn Express, which give me all I need from a hotel. And to get there I'll take public transport whenever there is a decent system available. Money spent on F is money well spent IMO, but money spent on top-end hotels & limos isn't.

Not necessarily. I was looking forward to the arrivals lounge as my overnight flight from Sydney regularly arrives at 4-4.30am. It provides an alternative place to wait for the airport express to open, rather than catching a taxi home.

The difference between the BA lounge and it's demand is because alot of the people landing in LHR they live alot further away from their work place, or more importantly they might be going to another city, which by train or car is 1-2 hours away to have a meeting, and then heading to their city of residence. As a frequent traveller to LHR i often find myself taking BA for the arrival lounge just so that I can freshen up before heading to Paddington / King Cross Train STation for my 1.5 hour train to birmingham or sometimes 2.5hr train to leeds.

In HK, your hotel (in most cases) isnt that far away from your work, hence it makes sense to go to your hotel first, of course taking a chance that you arrival on an early morning flight and they hotel wont give you a room till noon. Most people who are going onwards to china etc, will of course use the departure lounge instead....so this small lounge is fine i presume. I guess only time will tell....

I agree with christep. Everyone has different priority where to put his/her money. Some use it to buy expensive furniture, wines, wonderful stocks... I fly F a lot and spend less on other luxury items. One reason I fly F is to take advantage of all the goodies/advantages provided by the expensive fare. On monday I get into HK from Europe at 7:30 am and go directly to work (cannot afford to lose a couple of hours to get to my place in sai kung). A shower taken at the airport would be wonderful.

same here...my wife always says the only luxury item I buy for myself in my life is air tickets... :)

Actually I don't see many asians using this if they're originating from short haul destinations ... they would already be showered and all that already and they will be rushing to get to work and meetings etc.

As I understood it CX are taking over existing space in T2, so there is no physical room for them to build a bigger arrivals facility even if they wanted to?

Can I just clarify...?

- Do you have to arrive on an CX flight to use this lounge even if you satisfy the above requirement?
- If not, is it any flight, i.e., including non-OW flight? Perhaps any flights for CX Gold or above, but OW flights only for non-CX OW Emeralds?

Obviously you have to arrive on a CX/KA flight.... otherwise the lounge will be packed to the yin yangs !

That would definitely have skewed my perceptions. I haven't been on a long-haul BA flight into T1 (thanks to CX :p ). Thanks for the correction. :)
Ah, but I wasn't trying to make a comparison :) ; I was offering an observation against your claim that the BA Arrivals Lounges were relatively unused:
A bit overarching, no?

Good observations from you and CXDM, though, on what someone arriving on a JFK-HKG flight is probably expecting. Those remarks definitely expand my knowledge.

Any idea when this lounge will open? I'm arriving in HKG on Oct 3rd as MPC Gold. I'd like to take a look at it.

The opening date is listed in the first post. Please read before posting!

IMHO this is just crazy. There is no shortage of flights to BHX and LBA (not to mention MAN!). If you want to fly CX, you can always get a flight to AMS and then hop on one of many KL services across the channel. I've already done that twice (though I am not planning to fly CX again anytime soon)...I can't imagine somebody willing to pay for an F ticket yet skimping on the convenience of a flight to where they're actually going!

Sorry, but is that real? I still can't find mention of this new lounge on the CX website (news, HKIA, Arrivals, or Lounge section), nor is it on the oneworld website, nor have I gotten an e-mail or some sort of notification from CX about it. If it's scheduled to open so soon, then it's strange that there's no official information on it.

CX really seems to minimize their communications with the members these days...e.g. the huge increase in Asia Miles service fees "annonuced" on the AM website 5 days before the effective date with no early "warning" email sent out, and no mention on MPO page.

for this arrivals lounge - I don't know, just a pure guess, they don't want too many people to know too early because the lounge is indeed quite small ? imagine they send out an email to all members and all those including HKG-based just rushed to go have a look. at least they don't want to announce it until everything is smooth (e.g. a "soft launch" on Oct 1 only?).