Cathay Dragon 666

Had a biz trip in C class from HKG to EWR on the new A359, here's the review.

1) Seat - very comfortable and the addition of the pop-up extra space on the side, seems small, but makes a huge difference when you're laying-flat trying to sleep. The new pillow is much more comfortable and the blanket as well. Overall, I think the biggest plus in the upgraded C class.

2) Storage space - a regress in my opinion. You lose the shoe-box so you have to put your shoes in the storage cabin to the side (I didn't put it up because I don't want to dirty my briefcase and other things). The storage cabin seems bigger than the old C seat and the cover helps, but when you put shoes in there... The small cabin for headphone is much smaller, and the plugs are now inside that small cabin, making it useless if you want another cabin to hold things. If you travel light, then it's not a problem, but if you have some lose items you want to store, and you take off your shoes, it could be an issue.

3) IEF - a major major upgrade. So nice and easy to use all around. Best upgrade by Cathay in the IEF by far.

4) WIFI - horrible, just horrible. Did they throttle down the speed when they sense it's audio/video? I know they want to prevent people watch loudly but come on, at the price I paid I want to watch something over internet, and I have bluetooth Bose headphone. Speed is inconsistent even just browsing websites. They need to do something with this or else it's just not worth it.

5) Food - same crap. Seriously, I had food on domestic Chinese airlines that tastes better than Cathay long-haul C class food, how is that possible?

6) Bathroom - a little more spacious and window in the bathroom "brightens up" the experience, good touch.

Overall, a great upgrade.

QRC3288

I agree with your thoughts, except #4 . Have you used WiFi extensively on other carriers? IMO Cathay has hands down consistently the best international coverage I've seen, at least versus the other intl carriers I regularly fly (BR, SQ, JL, EK, QR). It's not like Jetblue speeds in the US, but very good. Streaming is unavailable on any of those other intl carriers I mention, and often with much, much worse data speeds to the point where it's not consistently possible to do work. I find CX WiFi to be very good in this regard.

But pretty much agree with everything else you say. Interesting point #2 . And #5 is....unfortunate but very true.

FlyPointyEnd

I think CX assumed that since the space underneath the ottoman/footrest is now open, (whereas the previous version was sealed except for the first row) people will put their shoes under the ottoman instead of the the shoe rack. Personally I do not have any use for the shoe rack as my shoes never fit them.

watery

Re #2 with my experience once in short-haul,
- I put my shoes under the "pop-up extra space" just outside the seat itself, so it doesn't jam the recline or block the doorway, but have to move when popping up/closing the extra space
- Yes the headphone cabin is pretty small
- For the plug, I managed to almost closed the door and only leave a gap for the cable, but I agree it's more convenient if the port is outside.

G-CIVC

I just put my shoes underneath the ottoman like what FlyPointyEnd does - a privilege that used to be for the coveted row 11 only, now available to all!

To me the new cabinet is most useful as a flat surface to place my knees on if I sleep on the side, doesn't go very far after that.

I wasn't aware there were new blankets or pillows, to me they are incredibly sh*tty compared to the plushness of QR (and the best is the new AA Casper bedding - I call that successful marketing as once I got off the flight, I started looking if I could buy the pillow/other bedding online. Holy cow it's expensive but I got off the flight with that much craving!)

At the end of the day, 35G (and 35J presumably) is not going to win my favor due to the lack of a prime seat (and of course lack of [chances of opups] to F, undercrewing compared to 77H, and general tightness of the seat compared to 777.

sxc

How is it bad that almost every seat is as good as each other, rather than only having one good seat?

FlyPointyEnd

After flying QR's A350 I wish CX would install personal air vents...

1010101

Wifi - an aircraft has to share a maximum of around 70Mb bandwidth. That's the limitation of the technology right now. I hope they do throttle video streaming, there is not the capacity for a whole aircraft to be watching videos/playing games as is so popular in Asia. It's not fair for one or two people to be hogging all of it.

Pitcher

What is the Internet speed by WiFi ?

RunningforMiles

On my last CX A350 flight early this month, the speeds were great. The only annoying thing was the idle cutout after 30 mins.

forumpersona999

I second this. I flew this last month and am about to fly it again today, blizzard at EWR permitting and my VPN connection stayed solid for almost the entire flight, bar a brief period somewhere between Canada and Russia.

Streaming media is specifically mentioned when you sign up for the service. They disclose clearly that bandwidth is limited and you won't be enjoying Skype or Youtube on the service. But VPN, IM, e-mail, booking a car, killing time on FT all worked flawlessly.

forumpersona999

I will do you a speedtest tonight and give you an example. Mind you this will not really tell us much because I will have no way of knowing how many other users are currently using it etc. I am sure there is heavy QoS optimization going on and speed will be capped as soon as a few other users pop up and compete with me for bandwidth. My impression just doing a little browsing and email / IM was that it was good but not awesome.

Herostratus

This 1000 times. Getting rid of the air vents was a dumb move

Does anyone else get interference in the headphones when something is plugged into the power outlet in the headphone case?

synthkeys

2 weeks ago on an A359 I noticed a faint high pitched whine when I had my phone plugged in while using the headphones.

Cambo

Same for me. Unplug the phone from the USB port and the noise disappears. Looks the USB charger emits electronic ripple on the line voltage, which in turn influences the active noise reduction (?) circuit of the headphone.