CATHAY PACIFIC
Cathay Pacific flies its Boeing 777-300ER on this route, but it has neither a first class cabin nor the airline’s fully flat herringbone business class seats. Instead it has 42 of Cathay Pacific’s regional business class seats. These are not fully-flat (nor lie-flat), and are laid out in a 2-3-2 pattern meaning direct aisle access is unavailable to window-seat passengers as well as those in the middle seats in the centre rows.
Given that this is a flight of just about 2.5 hours long, the lack of a fully or lie-flat seat isn’t especially grievous, though I had opted to minimise disruptions by booking a window seat – 16K. For a regional product, these seats are not bad. Pitch is good, even for me at 6’4” tall, and the width was sufficient that I didn’t feel hemmed in. The headrest on these seats is comfortable and adjusts nicely to provide neck support, and the buttons for the seat recline and entertainment system are intuitive to use.
In-seat storage is slim on these seats, but it is present. The armrests conceal a central storage space (this is where your headphones and in-flight magazine are held).
Speaking of headphones, these are comfortable and work quite effectively, though the IFE system does make adjusting the volume a bit unintuitive when trying to do so through the touchscreen.
Fortunately you do also have a controller hidden in the armrest to adjust the TV settings.
As these seats recline by sliding the base forward rather than the back of the seat backwards, there’s no issue of intruding upon another passenger’s legroom (or having one’s own intruded upon). As such, your best bet likely would be one of the aisle seats on row 15 or 16, keeping you equidistant from the galleys and lavatories without having to be right by one.
This being a relatively short flight, it wasn’t long until the menus came round (right after the seatbelt signs went off) and our meals were served. I went for the seafood curry and wasn’t disappointed. There are also nice, subtle touches with the cutlery as well, such as the inclusion of wooden chopsticks.
Cathay Pacific serves a good selection of wines, champagne and other alcoholic beverages onboard as well.
While Cathay Pacific may not offer a lie-flat or fully-flat seat on this flight, Hong Kong’s flag carrier provides a good flying experience compared with the competition on this route, with strong service and an overall comfortable regional seat product.