sxc

Crew comfort vs up to $100,000 incremental revenue per flight....which do you think will win?

FlyPointyEnd

How can it be $100,000 per flight?

With the new J service rolling out, meals will have to be plated in the galley, how do you suppose they could manage? Dr1 service center is so narrow, they cannot work back to back, it would result to longer waiting time for meals for passengers so ultimately its not all about crew comfort.

sxc

A return to JFK from HKG can be $90k. Admittedly I haven't looked today, but I have seen this in the past. So two seats is around $100k per one way.

Yes they don't fly these to JFK, but they could.

QRC3288

Where they mucked up was having the two galleys and insisting on uniformity with other fleet types. It may have saved design costs, although I'm not privy to the details. I understand the theoretical ideal of having a bunch of planes with similar layouts, especially to save costs. Unfortunately I think it has backfired on A359.

And now they've released the A350-1000 with what appears to be the same 11D/G combo. This is surprising to me. But I suspect they might've been too deep in to change, and they have bigger fish to fry...many of the J class seats are still in bad shape due to the well-documented seat build quality issues. I imagine they get far more complaints about the seats falling apart than 11D/G, which as pointed out above frequently don't have revenue passengers.

CX's A359 do have a lot of galley space! This is true. I imagine this was seen as a positive factor when CX was doing their design. But it's divided into two galleys and one is virtually unused! This is just poor design, the missteps between the theoretical and the practical. They technically have a lot of galley space on a total psf basis but practically they don't since one galley is essentially unutilized. As a result of all the galley space, you gotta cram somewhere because this is a business after all. So you get two bad seats, because the CX bathrooms are in plopped the main cabin area to save space due to an already large amount of psf space dedicated to galleys. I recently took HX A350 from Shanghai in J, and they keep one of the cockpit corridor galleys which is the "off the shelf" Airbus A350 J class design. The second HX J class lav is on the starboard aisle but HX has pulled back the first two rows of seats so they aren't "sitting in the toilet" like CX. It works on HX. We had a full house in J and no issues getting into that HX starboard aisle and disturbing pax.

I also want to clarify another point above, in response to one of my posts. It says all the other seats on CX J on the A350 are wonderful or something to that extent. I strongly disagree, and I've flown in the A359 J class probably 25 times now. Of course it's a personal oreference but this is mine. I avoid the back minicabin on mid and longhaul flights due to frequent cabin disruptions from the back, occasional self-upgrading, and generally poor and slow service (even as DM). You really need excellent crews to patrol and be proactive with service to make those seats good, IMO.

​​​​​​To a place like TPE I don't care but as the flights get longer it can be annoying. My preferred seats on A359 J are the window seats up until the second to last row of the forward section, or the middle seats from between the third row and second to last, also of the front section.

FlyPointyEnd

Actually the Dr2 service center is used for PEY and EY i think. I noticed them rolling the cart from the galley on my last HKG-MEL flight. (I do recall my friends warning me from taking the mini-cabin on the 35G for this reason)

I noticed this on the same flight, people from PEY would still open the curtain to use the lavatories at Dr2. since the lights were already on at the back, it could be quite glaring to those sleeping....it was never policed, and it seems that the crew was aware of it, but did not bother to police the passengers.

QRC3288

Very interesting. I wonder if they heat-up PEY meals in here? (at least on longer-haul flights, the first PEY meal is a J class meal after all?)

Those galleys are definitely used for storage and whatnot. But they seem very under-utilized. I think the other "problem" is the back galley is very far from PEY and the first rows of Y.

Yea it is definitely an issue, and it exists on the 33K/E and 77G, too, not just 35G.

I will add a point of praise, for a different plane: CX nailed it with 77H J class. That plane is truly a pleasure to fly in J. The galley, lavs, even the main dorm room area, the design just "works" perfectly. It is a joy to fly in and is your best bet for a good J flight. And obviously the best J class seats (IMO) fleet-wide are in the 77H mini-cabin. But even if you're in the main dorm-room area, it is still excellent. I wish I could get mini-cabin but don't fret if I'm in the dorm-room either. And you have a nice variance in the seats in the dorm-room: towards the front, more attentive service and closer access to the lavs. Towards the back, nice and quiet because the PEY and Y pax rarely/ever come through (probably due to the lavs being very far away, in the forward section). And there are no lavs rear, so no J traffic goes back either. It's just an excellent layout. Presently, 77H is the only different layout than the "normal" CX 3-class long-haul...33K/33E, 77G, 35G, whereby J class has two sections and the second is a mini-cabin after door 2.

So keeping this on topic, if there is any possible thing to look forward to with the A350-1000 deliveries, it's that CX has changed up the format a little. A351 J class will join 77H as being the two "different" long-haul layouts (with the "normal" being 33K, 33E, 77G, 77K and 35G...aka two J sections with a rear-mini cabin behind doors 2). So, bad 11D/G bathroom seats aside, at least A351 brings some uncertainty and that could be a good thing. Of course, I can already see something I like less than 77H: there is a galley immediately behind the A351 J class, so unlike 77H (PEY is immediately behind, not a galley), you could have some galley noise in the last rows of J on A351, which makes them a lot less desirable to me in theory than the 77H last few rows, which can be lovely.

Arbeysix

I can clarify, at least for the practice in PEY on HKG-MEL; the PEY meals are served from the back galley (ie. back of the bus in Y) and then cleared from the rear J mini-cabin. Alas the PEY meals (at least on the Aus routes) are not J class meals!

QRC3288

very interesting. thx.

So what you're saying is they serve PEY meals from the Y galley, but clear PEY to the second half-used J galley (and must traipse through the J class section in the process?) Is that correct?

At least with A350-1000, the rear galley seems like it's going to be dedicated to Y and PEY versus J. That's a plus I suppose.

sxc

The hot part of the dish is actually from the J menu. But you would hardly be able to tell - partly because J food isn't great, and because of the way it comes served on an economy looking tray, with a nicer casserole dish.

If you look at the casserole, it is either porcelain (or thick plastic - not sure) - the economy casseroles are foil. And if you look at the contents, they are actually different.

For the collection of the trays, I'm pretty sure they collect them with the rest of the Y cabin - the empty trolley is rolled up from behind, and goes from front to back. And I've observed this on the Australia routes.In your experience, there may have been some proactive crew that saw that PEY meal trays were empty and took it upon themselves to collect them and take them to the J galley.

Arbeysix

SXC: You may well be correct on the crew simply being proactive. As I've seen it on maybe my last 6 MEL-HKG sectors I thought it must be SOP.

QRC3288: When seated either side of the curtain (PEY or J minicab) the PEY service cart doesn't bother me much. Given the small size of the PEY cabin it is a compact trolley and the FA attending seems to quite quickly and efficiently clear trays from one side of the PEY cabin and then promptly does the other side. What bothers me more (again when seated either side of the curtain in J or PEY) are the number of PEY pax helping themselves to the J lavs. I agree with others that this is poorly policed. It isn't helped by the fact that the Airbus sign indicating the location of the toilets located on the bulkhead in PEY has a large green arrow. While I suspect some PEY pax are deliberately shuffling into the J lavs many I have seen look up and see a green arrow which is ahead of them and without thinking proceed forwards even though the sign is indicating that the lavs are towards the rear. This is an easy mistake to make for pax who are not FF or familiar with the layout or generally fatigued. In an ideal world there would be more lavs all round, particularly when has been the case with the 359 there are frequent technical issues...

cx4ever

I know Sam Chui wouldn't be very reliable, but is this true? Will A35K Y seats be "rolling out progressively to other fleet"? I would imagine the 35Gs would keep theirs, and the 777s are getting their own Recaros, so are the A330 seats being replaced? Nice to see the double padding back though!

Kachjc

the A350-1000 seat is very similar to the new 777 seats

the A350-900 fleet can already do this, this concept is now new at CX

zzz997

If you watch Sam Chui's IG story, there was a presentation slide during the 35K delivery metioned A330 seat will also be replaced. Not sure just for the hard shell seat only or whole fleet.

Kachjc

once the 777-300's are done the a330 will be retrofitted
once that is done CX will release the next generation regional seats on the A321 and Long haul seats on the 777-9

SLGO