I know this has been rumored for some time, and I'm sure many of you are hearing about this now too: CX will be rolling out some type of dine on demand service in J class starting in 2017. Crew will also be asked to make beds in J class.

I heard it from an office staff in CX City this morning. Apparently all crew will be asked to go back for a mandatory 1 day training sometime in the coming months to learn the new procedures.

FWIW, this is unrelated to the short-lived J class dining "enhancement" that occurred last year and went away just as quickly. Some of you will remember that on select flights there were the fake candles, extended services, etc. Turns out that was mainly a promotion paid for by a catering consultancy to test it out, using CX as a free guinea pig. This new situation I describe above is different.

Without more details I can't really speculate on how this will play out. But I do know that with CX's relatively low staff: passenger ratio (at least compared to other top airlines), I would hope CX is also considering to put 1 or 2 more staff in J class for this. Although.....I doubt it. Could be great or could be a fail depending on how it's executed.

Will they also be serving the main course restaurant style by plating food on real plates as opposed to the same container used to heat the food?

This could be a reason to change your seating strategy to choose the last rows of the cabin so that you don't get disturbed by other people having their meals.

This could be nice. I certainly love the option on QR.

Wont be as impactful if the food is still as bad as it is now. Knowing CX, though, I imagine they won't fix the basics and will focus on the frills.

Unfortunately I don't know any details at this time. But I imagine the details of this will quickly leak out, as many staff and CX employees already know about it.

Plating J meals in the galley has worked well for AC. Some of the dishes were excellent, most were meh, but clearly the lessons taught in food styling worked. Not as impressive as SQ, but definitely better than many others.

In case you want a glimpse, I posted photos of all the main meals on a recent AC 15.

Menu and main meals
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/27282475-post1246.html

Does this mean CX J gets mattress, like QF Business Suite? That's a real enhanvement if it is.

In QR J I was able to down four meals (three full and one as a sort of a pre-landing snack) on an 18-hour flight. I really doubt CX can/will replicate.

And no way they can pull this off with current staffing.

Alternatively it'll start backing up like iPhone Reserve pickup queue in an Apple Store and all our food will be cold.

CX staff are so unwilling to serve on demand that, if anyone orders a snack in the middle of a tpac flight, they decide that "people are hungry" and force-feed them the second meal halfway through the flight. I doubt that they will do DOD properly. We'll probably end up being afraid to ask them because they will be rude.

Plus, it may require different galley equipment to heat and serve individual items on demand compared to serving in bulk.

Imagine that...5 crew (in reality fewer than that since there are rest breaks), 53 pax, repeated 'dings' and 'clangs', on a day flight like 898/830...

OMG percy san... 4 meals...

It might be like F class, where there are standard meal times, but you have the option to dine at other times. Also, they might ask you at the beginning of the flight when you would like to dine?

In the end, it might be a cost cutting measure - less snacks loaded because people will just eat whatever is left over / still in the fridge.

I was flying QR Business and while they did have dine on demand, during the beginning of the flight, the flight attendant going around the cabin for meal orders insisted that I order something even if I am not going to eat it during their "standard meal time" (this is the time where the most number of passengers would be eating).

She basically said "if you don't order now, your choice may be gone by the time you actually want to eat, we will keep it for you and only heat it when you ask us to do so".

This is Hong Kong staff we are talking about. Of course they will be rude...

I will know greater details in the next few days. Until then, hopefully maortega15 or some of the other folks with ties to CX can chime in.

I would be thrilled if CX increased the FAs on-board by 1 or 2. It would make a huge difference in dine on demand. However, I suspect this is wishful thinking.

Any idea how many crew are there in QR?