My 14-hour Cathay Pacific A350-1000 business class flight was phenomenal, with delicious food and perhaps the most comfortable business class seat in the skies. Cathay Pacific’s longhaul business class is a pleasure to fly.
Cathay Pacific A350-1000 Business Class Review (HKG-AMS)
I booked my ticket for 75,000 AA miles, which included business class from Hong Kong to Amsterdam on Cathay Pacific and Amsterdam to Helsinki on Finnair.
Check-In
At 6:45 pm, I arrived at Hong Kong International Airport and found a mostly deserted check-in area for business class. Moments later, I had my boarding passes in hand and proceeded to the security checkpoint and passport control.
Lounge
I arrived in HKG more than four hours before departure, which gave me plenty of time to check out the Cathay Pacific lounges (The Wing, The Deck, and The Pier) and the Qantas Lounge. All are excellent lounges, but The Pier is my favorite.
Boarding
Boarding began about 40 minutes before departure and there was a last-minute gate change moving our gate from one end of the airport (near The Pier lounge) to the other end (near The Wing).
Cathay Pacific 271
Hong Kong (HKG) – Amsterdam (AMS)
Wednesday, February 5
Depart: 11:20 PM
Arrive: 6:35 AM+1
Duration: 14 hr, 15 min
Distance: 5,773 miles
Aircraft: Airbus A350-1000
Seat: 18K (Business Class)
Stepping onboard, I was welcomed at door 1L by the chief stewardess (dressed in red) and invited to walk through the forward galley and turn right.
Seat
The A350-1000 business class cabin is beautiful and features 46 reverse-herringbone Safran Cirrus III seats. In fact, this particular seat is my favorite of all reverse herringbone seats and may be my favorite business class seat of all. It was very comfortable in all positions and felt very spacious.
The seat is 20.2 inches wide and converts into a 75-inch lie-flat bed. There is ample personal storage in a side console cabinet and storage containers on either side of the seat at knee level, a nice feature of this particular seat. There’s also plenty of room for your feet and easy-to-reach seat controls in the side console.
There’s even a little seat strip that flips up to give you a couple extra inches of width while in lie-flat mode.
Sadly, there are no personal air vents onboard.
I think the cabin colors, though muted, are very stylish.
Boarding finished quickly and we pushed back a bit early. Strong headwinds meant our flight time would be the full 14 hours and 15 minutes…
I managed to sleep for about six hours after supper…I put myself to sleep watching Conclave and then listening to Jon Batiste play Beethoven. The bedding includes a mattress pad, soft pillow, and large fluffy duvet.
Amenity Kit + Slippers
The Bamford-branded amenity kits (four different colors were available) are attractive and included:
- eye shade
- dental kit
- ear plugs
- mouthwash
- Bamford skincare products
- cooling body gel
- multi-balm
- pillow mist
Slippers were also present at each seat.
Lavatory
Business class features four lavatories: two in the front of the cabin and two in the rear. The lavatory featured Bamford hand gel and body lotion.
Food + Drink
During boarding, a pre-departure beverage was offered, including orange juice, water, sparkling wine, or Cathay Pacific’s signature mint juice, which I tried and found refreshing.
Menus were distributed and orders taken during boarding.
I was also asked to fill out a breakfast card indicating my preference for the pre-arrvial meal.
Supper
Supper was served promptly after takeoff. Service began with a hot towel and a choice of beverage (I ordered a Negroni).
I pre-ordered lamb shoulder as part of a menu collaboration between Cathay Pacific and French restaurant Louise, located in Hong Kong Central. The dish included lamb shoulder braised in lamb fat served over a bed of bulgur wheat salad with mint, coriander and dried fruits, and finished with lamb jus infused with the North African spice mix of ras el hanout and toasted pine nuts.
A perfect meal…a delicious dish!
Note that with this supper service, there was no appetizer or salad offered, though that was available on the a la carte menu. Oddly, I asked for the pan-fried halloumi cheese from the “all day” menu as an appetizer, but the flight attendant said it was not available until later in the flight.
I finished my meal with a cheese plate followed by a decadent chocolate cake with raspberries.
Mid-Flight Snack
When I awoke, there was still more than five hours of flight time left. I took the opportunity to order the “famous” Cathay Pacific cheesburger (with French Fries) which lived up to its reputation and was one of the best burgers (if not the best burger) I’ve ever had on an airplane. Even the French Fries were excellent. This was so delicous I almost had a second one…
Breakfast
I worked for a few hours before breakfast was served about 90 minutes prior to landing…a Western breakfast that included fresh fruit, warm pastries, a kale and sweetcorn egg souffle, pork sausage, smoked bacon, a roasted tomato, and fried potatoes. Everything was quite good, including the cappuccino.
IFE + Wi-Fi
Cathay Pacific’s A350-1000 features a Panasonic eX3 IFE system and Panasonic eXConnect satellite wifi. While I tuned into the aircraft’s tailcam or moving flight map for most of the journey, I did appreciate the wide selection of movies, TV shows, games, and particularly music…I greatly appreciated the classical soundtracks available.
Noise-canceling headphones:
Service
Despite the apparent unwillingness to bring halloumi cheese with supper, the crew was excellent…they were attentive, addressed me by name, and were proactive.
CONCLUSION
We landed on time in Amsterdam, though the transit security checkpoints were not open yet (I only had to wait five minutes). I enjoyed this flight very much. While it would have been fun to fly the new 777-300ER Aria business class, the A350-1000 is a solid choice with an excellent seat. I can’t wait to fly Cathay Pacific again. Expect great service, great food, and a great seat.
Probably the most under-rated business class seat in the market. It is far better than the 77W seat.
Very comfortable, very spacious, loads of storage and good screen.
There is no need for a door on this seat as you cannot really see other pax. Combine that with CX soft product and you have a winner.
…..but people see no door and dismiss it.
reverse herringbone are the past generation of zj seats but this certainly looks like the best of the bunch
May be past-generation, but I would argue better than many closed-door variants of this generation.
As someone who is very tall and has broad shoulders a 20″ wide business class seat is a bit tight on long flights.
I find the lounge pictures awesome, particularly the Cathay lounges that were all airy or just comfy looking while the centerpiece of the Qantas lounge is a gigantic bar.
A bit tight? very tight, very narrow; SQ and Eva Air have 26-28″ wide seats, more personal space around
the seat; that’s so important; can’t believe they didn’t have appetizer, salad or soup with that entre.
I know they use the departure time to justify no salad/appetizer with the main meal, but it does seem a bit cheap no to give passengers that choice at all.
Otherwise, it’s a very solid overall product and definitely one of the better airlines out there. Though I imagine it will be difficult for you going back to United or Delta’s burger after enjoying this one…
Agreed that the option should be given. I would have been very happy with the halloumi appetizer and not sure why that presented a problem (unless ovens were all full…). But excellent quality food and that burger was the best ever.
I can only echo Tom’s remarks. On a recent trip to Japan from Manchester we were on the A350-1000 outbound to HKG and an A350-900 inbound and the business class seats are way superior to those on the 77W we had for the onward flight to Tokyo and arguably more comfortable than Qatar’s Q Suite.
It’s funny they’re offering Chinese wines. I’m sure they’re actually fairly palatable for wine made in China, but I just can’t imagine choosing that over something more conventional
I flew four long haul sectors with Cathay last month. Very enjoyable but some consistent oddities. There is no pepper and salt provided with meals, nor were drink refills proactively offerred. There is no jam with breakfast but there is butter every meal that goes unused. Do I really want to butter the pastries?
The burger is great and had it twice. First time there was no sauce bottle and on the second they had burnt the bun. Then there was the meal minus the requested wine and on another flight being served the wrong meal. Fortunately quickly fixed as I had preordered the lamb shoulder.
In my view they are understaffed for the size of the business cabin and Matt experienced just that with the unwillingness to vary his meal.
One thing I should note is that on my flight, business was less than half full…low winter load.
Then I am profoundly disappointed with CX as it must be a tolerated team behaviour. My flights were near full (MEL(Au)-MXP so I tolerated service lapses that just would not happen on SQ, JL or even, dare I say,the ever erratic UA.
Boarding through door 1L ? Must have been tortuous tolerating all those ‘untouchables’ from the back of the bus filing by …
… “Chief Stewardess”. ??? Was this a flight ‘back in time’ ? lol
That discolored portion of the lav sink looks gross, especially by pristine Asian airline standards.. Sure that wasn’t a stock photo from a US airline ? … lol
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe chief stewardess is an official Cathay title (like on SQ) and separate from the purser, not one that I reached into the dustbin of history to retrieve!
Curious they couldn’t provide the halloumi given that it appears on the dinner menu as well. The dinner menu is confusing as the soups and halloumi are listed as mains.
My biggest complaint is the service and the lavatories. On my HKG-SFO flight on their A359, the crew disappeared after meal service and it was a daytime flight. There was no checking on pax or offering drink refills. I had to ring the bell to order a mid flight snack and they never collected the dirty plates even when they were walking by. they only collected them when breakfast was served. The lavatories were atrocious, waste paper and water everywhere, I had to push the waste paper down the chute to make room, it’s apparent that no one cleans the toilets, maybe they feel it’s beneath them? I don’t know. The best thing about CX is their first class lounges in HKG, and ground service, nothing more.
Sounds like an outlier, most flights on Cathay tend to have clean toilets.
@Matthew was it comfortable without personal air vents?
Wasn’t bad at all, thankfully.
I read the comments here aghast at people moaning about trivialities. You entitled lot need to get a LIFE! and stop sucking your thumbs.
Maybe you should fly business to Gaza to see how the other half live.
What a shame the people of Gaza do not overthrow Hamas themselves, beheading each and every leader as a warning to others that their leaders will be held accountable.
Maybe the Israelis could do the same to Likud and other rightwing parties there as well.
When Israel uses its own people as human shields or hides military weapons and personnel in schools and hospitals, I’ll support that.
Israel already is doing that.
Well, then all is fair in love and war. But I haven’t seen that at all.
So it’s ok when Israel does it but not when others do it?
I used Cathay Pacific’s service in January on a late-night flight from Hong Kong to Christchurch. During the journey, the late-night meal had run out, so I had to settle for a burger as dinner, paired with red wine. In the morning, my wife was informed that the staff would wake her up when breakfast was served, but no one came to wake her at all. She lost her bf.
This was my first and last time flying business class with Cathay Pacific.
If I were to rate the experience:
Business class bed: 4 stars
Food: 3 stars
Politeness of staff: 4 stars
Staff attentiveness: 2 stars
Cleanliness: 4 stars