[Bullfrog]

I’ve always enjoyed CX First between London & Hong Kong. With 9 seats and really great food, it was always a disappointment when CX downsized some of their aircraft to Melbourne & sydney & hence removed First to MEL & SYD.

These new Business Class seats look superb. The ‘single’ outward facing window seats look almost as good as BA First, let alone BA Club.

[FlyingChinaman]

Bullfrog,

I was at the Cathay new business class product launch a few months back and tried out the seats, actually help by some of Cathay senior people to showcase their new product !!!

Cathay is putting their new seats on flights to Australia before the UK and the US. You will soon have an opportunity to complete the “missing link” of you second leg to Australia soon!

They were wonderfully comfortable that you can now dream about the new travel experience coming your way soon!

[oldchinahand]

Bullfrog : FlyingChinaman

I don’t think you will see the new business class cabin to the UK any time soon as 747 and 340 aircraft are currently used. The new cabins will not be retro-fitted to these older aircraft and so until these are fazed out and the A350 arrives (unless new 777 aircraft are going to be used) in 2013/4 you will as I understand it still have to put up with the ‘coffin’.

Last week I was fortunate to try out the new seat (11K CX100 SYD-HKG) Overall an excellent product and only small quibbles. Shoe locker door jammed and the storage cupboard door had a ‘hair trigger’ and sprung open if inadvertently touched and the mirror was missing. Next to my seat there was a added buffer ledge between the fixed side table and the cabin wall ( I suspect because this seat did not fit well in position on this 330 aircraft) at the same height as the table which runs along the cabin wall and past the arm rest and seat cushion.

There is a void at the end of this ledge that cannot be accessed and it is very easy for small objects placed on the table/ledge to fall into this void and be almost impossible to retrieve. A simple fix is fitting a small up-stand to the end of the ledge.

The seat is positioned with a view out of 2 windows with loads of room, very private but no isolated. A little hard but probably only due to being so new. I found that there was some time lag with the seat controls which took some getting used to and it was a little awkward to position the seat as I wanted.

The table and side work surface worked very well and offered a very large work surface. Plenty of room on the fixed side surface for drinks,snacks books etc so that the fold out table only needs to be used for full meals. The large TV screen was very well positioned, did not intrude and was very easy to push out of the way and stow. This is definitely the best business class seat I have used and beats the BA seat that was my previous favorite by a considerable margin.

I did not like the look of the cabin though. Very bland with acres of off-white plastic and very little colour contrast, overall very dull,a shame because the product is very very good good.

[BusinessTraveller]

Our Business Traveller Asia-Pacific edition has just published a review of the new business class seating, on board a B777-300ER delivery flight from Seattle to Hong Kong. This can be seen here:

http://tinyurl.com/3wxhr47

[Author]

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