Cathay Pacific Business Class
Sydney to Hong Kong
on the A350-1000
Eli Snyder
Flight Date: April 8th, 2023 | Publish Date: May 9th
Cathay Pacific Business Class can be booked with points on multiple OneWorld alliance partners, but the portal I’ve found to be the most lucrative is with American Airlines.
I booked my flight for just 40,000 miles and $60.90 in taxes in fees which, compared with the cash value of $3,408, represented a cents-per-point (CPP) value of 8.37. In award redemption terms that’s incredible value, given that the average credit card travel portal will offer redemption rates at a measly 1 CPP. In other words, I was able to score 8.37x the value of points had they been used in a credit card travel portal.
It’s worth noting that the only transferable credit card point currency to AAdvantage miles are Bilt Rewards points, which can be earned with the Bilt Mastercard. I view this card as one of the best cards on the market, and encourage you to apply at the link here (particularly if you pay rent).
I booked my flight on December 22nd, 2022 and flew on April 8th, 2023. At 107 days in advance I remember seeing plenty of availability.
However, at the time of writing this review (May 6th), I performed a quick search on the AAdvantage portal and after filtering for non-stop business class availability between Sydney and Hong Kong, saw just one single availability populate, which was just two days after the date of my search (May 8th).
Booking
Ground Experience
After arriving at the International Terminal at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport, I was pleased to see a dedicated Business Class line at the Cathay Pacific check-in desks.
There was a decent queue of roughly 20 people, but the counter agents were organized in getting passengers checked-in efficiently and with a cheerful attitude.
Lounge
As a OneWorld alliance member, CathayPacific grants its business class passengers access to the Qantas Business Lounge, and first class passengers access to the Qantas First Lounge.
I arrived at the Qantas Business Lounge at roughly 6am, just one hour after it had opened. This lounge is simply stunning, with plenty of seating areas and floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the international terminal apron with a gorgeous backdrop of the Sydney skyline.
The lounge has two identical serving stations with a full food buffet, bar, and coffee station. Only one of the two serving stations was opened at this early hour. I was surprised to see that the full bar was open as well. The lounge staff were frequent in restocking food and beverage, as well as assisting guests with anything they may need.
In addition to the two serving stations, there is a long island with a staffed coffee station and an assortment of sweets. The coffee station was quite busy and the baristas were handling the significant foot traffic quite well, taking orders and dishing out coffees at an efficient pace.
Overall, I found the food and beverage offerings to be ample and tasty, particularly for a lounge at 6am. The quality F&B paired with the palatial space and beautiful views would certainly make for a pleasant lounge to spend a layover of any duration.
Cabin and Seat
The business class cabin on the a350-1000 is arranged in 12 rows of a 1-2-1 reverse herringbone configuration with only 2 seats in the first row, all-together totaling 46 seats. Cathay Pacific uses the Safran Cirrus seat on the a350-1000s, not to be confused with the Collins Aerospace super-diamond seat.
While this was just my first time flying in a wide-body business class seat (!!!), I found the seat be plenty spacious with ample storage for all my belongings. I appreciated the fact that every seat has direct aisle access and is facing towards the windows. It’s technically not the most private seat in the sky, but with the seats facing away from the aisle coupled with the small privacy partition Cathay installed on their seats, I felt that I had plenty of privacy for the duration of the 8.5 hour flight.
Beyond having multiple storage cubbies, the seat had all the core functions one would expect, including a power outlet, headphone jack, usb outlets, vanity mirror, reading light, and seat controls.
Amenities and In-Flight Entertainment (IFE)
Waiting for me at my seat were a pair of slippers, a mattress pad, a thick blanket, a pillow, a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, and an amenity kit supplied by Bamford, a British cosmetics company.
The slippers were quite comfortable, although too small for my M US 11.5 (euro 44) sized-feet. The mattress pad, blanket, and pillow were all very plush and soft, making for a cozy flight across Southeast Asia into Hong Kong. As is always the case, the noise-cancelling headphones weren’t as noise-cancelling as the headphones I had brought with me, but they still certainly got the job done.
The amenity kit was stocked with a toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, hand and body lotion, lip balm, facial mist, ear plugs, a sleeping mask, and a coupon for purchasing Bamford products. Overall I found the amenity kit to be well-stocked and a nice offering, especially considering the quality of the Bamford products.
Perhaps the aspect I was the most pleasantly surprised by on this entire flight was the IFE. Beyond the high quality of the hard products (the remote was very responsive and user-friendly, and the screen had a very high picture quality with minimal glare), the selection of entertainment was incredibly vast. There were too many movies and shows to count, with tens to hundreds of options for each genre. There is simply no amount of time you could spend on Cathay Pacific and run out of entertainment to keep you occupied!
Additionally, I enjoyed how multifaceted the flight path feature was. There were multiple different layouts on flight stats, as well as varied flight path tracking options, and best of all, there were multiple external camera viewing options to watch the a350 cruise in the sky.
Food and Beverage
The dining experience of my flight consisted of a breakfast immediately after take-off and a lunch service around 5 hours into the flight. I found the business menu to be generous, with multiple options for breakfast and lunch, as well as an extensive bar menu.
Cathay offers the option to reserve your main dish up to a month in advance, so that you can ensure your desired choice is available for you. I neglected to utilize this offering, as I wanted to engage the flight attendant on what she thought the best main course was.
For breakfast, I opted for the western breakfast, which consisted of a tomato and mushroom frittata, smoked salmon, and vegetables. This course was frankly delicious and happened to be the tastiest thing I would eat on the entire flight.
Bread service complimented both the breakfast and lunch services.
For lunch, I went with the stewardess’ recommendations for both the starter and main course, selecting the cream of corn soup and stir-fried seafood with X.O. sauce, respectively. Both courses were sufficiently appetizing, although nothing too special to be honest; I felt they were under-salted and presentation certainly wasn’t a priority. The portion size of the main course was disappointingly small as well.
For dessert, I enjoyed both the cheese course and the apple crumble. The cheeses were high quality and the apple crumble was really good.
Overall Impression
Beginning my series of business & first class flights with Cathay Pacific was certainly a strong start; from the stellar ground experience due to their standing as a OneWorld member, to the spacious seat, the well-stocked amenities, comfortable bedding, ample in-flight entertainment, to the extensive food & beverage offerings, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my 8.5 hour journey from Sydney to Hong Kong. While the service was rather cold, quick, and at times felt like they were just going through the motions, I’m hesitant to dock points as all but 2 of the 46-seat cabin was occupied.
To be completely frank, I would be hard-pressed to have a negative sentiment of my business class experience with Cathay Pacific, as I’m utterly enamored with long-haul premium cabin travel at large. I’ve spent years reading and watching reviews of business and first class products on wide-body aircrafts, conducting research on how I can one-day afford to find myself in the front of the plane. Thus, the entire experience of having a lie-flat seat, ordering from a menu, having complimentary service at airport lounges, and everything in-between is pure magic to me. I’m fascinated by the logistics and mechanics that go into making such an experience come to life, and therefore am delighted and grateful to finally get to experience it all for myself.
May that wander never be lost on me!
Thank you for reading my first ever flight review; trust that there will be many more to come!