Do a year long placement in Japan or finish uni? Tough choice, experience or a degree?? But no tim...
Do a year long placement in Japan or finish uni? Tough choice, experience or a degree?? But no time to think, got a deadline to meet every week fraid time for Ciao is getting less and less :o( Try my best to pop in when I can.
Member since:10.10.2001
Reviews:52
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I must admit, I do travel a lot as my relatives are pretty spread out in the world so I have traveled with various airline companies and multiple types of planes (apart from concorde as it costs way to much) and seeing that Cathay Pacific are an Asian airline, they usually participate in long haul flights which are usually Boeing 747's.
In my opinion, I consider Cathay Pacific one of the better airlines. With the amount of times my family and I have traveled with them, we never once had any trouble with poor service or overbooking. Losing luggage almost never happens but there was this one time where the check-in assissant forgot to give us one of our luggage ID tags so we couldn't check on them to make sure they were sucesfully loaded on our connecting flight but luckly Cathay Pacific had loaded our luggage and nothing was lost.
Food
Depending on your destination, they usually serve different meals and it is definite that you will never go hungry with this airline. Like every long distance airline, they will most likely serve meals and snacks around every hour.
Breakfast usually consists of , some fruit drink like orange juice, possibly a little sweet or a mint, some sort off egg, possibly omelets, or bread like crossiants with butter, some sort of fruit conserve.
Lunch is usually some kind of light eating. It probably has a choice of two or three sandwhiches for you to choose from with a choice of drink from anything like tea/coffee
to fizzy drinks/alchol to plain old water. If it is not sandwhiches that are served, it will be some light eating like pasta. Again there is a good chance that there is bread in the form of a roll appearing on your tray. To round this all off, there will be a dessert or a bowl of fruit to finish it off.
Lastly, dinner. It is usually some typical Chinese meal, the airline being Asian and all. It may be rice with some type of meat or noodles probably served with broth, again there is a choice for you select what you want. Again there is the same wide selection of drinks and beverages to quench your thirst and are avalible at all times. There will again be the traditional bread in the form of a roll with all the spreadable things on your tray which gets served on almost every airline meal.
If you are still hungry after your meal, you can ask for a little more because there are usually spare plane meals avaliable for anyone who is still hungry. If it is just a midnight snack you are looking for, it will probably be a packet of biscuits or some bread. Airline staff are more than willing to help you have the best flight you can possibly have, espically Cathay Pacific staff.
Comfort
Like I said before, Cathay Pacific usually deals with long haul flights so the seats on the planes are very comfortable on the Boeing 747 and on the 767 planes. The leg room is always better in the higher up classes like buisness and first class but on these long haul planes le leg room is more than bearable in every class.
Trying to sleep is not a problem, although a little awkard sleeping sitting up. The hardest time to sleep is when you are unlucky enough to be placed near a crying child. Although airline staff attempt to please the baby, it is still very annoying. If I see a young child nearby, I try to go to sleep as early as possible as I am always tired on a plane so I sleep heavily. Moving on.....
The seats are adjustable as usual so you can tilt it back to suit your needs and there are movable headrests so you have something to lean on when you are sleeping. They also provide a pillow and a blanket to aid you in your quest for comfortable sleep.
If you like to listen to a little gentle music to sing you to sleep, they supply with headphones for you to listen to your choice of music as there are a wide range of radio channels for you to select.
Entertainment
Like I mentioned previously, they supply headphones for your audio needs. I must say that Cathay Pacific supply headphones that are more comfortable to wear than most airlines. They are made with a wide plastic collar that holds the speakers together in the shape of headphones, they fit on a lot easier that the metal ones. The speakers themslves are of a high quality and they don't distort if turned too loud but that is not advisable as you usually annoy the people sitting nearby. the speakers are covered in a medium thick foam covering that holds on pretty tight so they do not scratch your ears and they don't fall off half way through your flight.
There is a small screen in the headrest of the seat infront so it is a lot more conveinent than sharing one screen on the ceiling of the plane. The screen is not just for the purpose of a movie. There are many things that can be done with it.
First off, there are different channels for you to select so you have a wide choice of activites to do. There are 9 standard channels and if you upgrade to buisness or first class, there are around 16 I think (never done that before). You can the many movies that are showed on the channels. There were about three different movies showed on all the channels on the 16 hour flight I was on, so it should be roughly the same on others I would imagine.
Second choice there are 12 music channels you can browse through. They range from anything like heavy rock to dance music to classical. There is a wide selection but usually it is just a recording that gets played over and over again. The last flight I was on, the recording lasted around two hours and after that, they just looped it over and over again. That's one of the reasons I like to take a portable stero of some sort with me on planes.
Lastly, there is a shopping channel that lets you see through most of the duty free stuff avaliable on the plane and a small selection of games. I enjoyed the hangman game which was one of the choices as the high score was remembered for the whole plane and the seat number was displayed so a little competitiveness was avaliable.
Also there is a channel that lets you see all the flight stats. You can find out things like you planes location on a map at that moment in time, plane speed, outside or inside tempertaure, altitude, time, etc.
If all else fails, you can ask the airline staff for a free deck of cards for you to play with your family and friends or maybe the person sitting next to you.
Preparation
There is little preparation needed for Cathay Pacific apart from purchasing the ticket, packing your bags, and going to the airport. I've flown with Cathay Pacific quite a few times, and I have only ever experienced one delay with them but that was really the weathers fault as it was bad fog. The main thing that annoys me sometimes is that they are sometimes ahead of schedule so there is less time to browse through the wide range of duty-free shops. But as usual, you have to arrive at the terminal, at least two hours proir to flight take-off as you have to go through security and possibly immigration.
Pricing
To nearly every person that is looking for an airline company to choose, they try to select the cheapest, so I would say it is the most important factor to the avarage family as flying distances is not a cheap thing. Well like most airlines, it depends on the travel agent and if they are doing any deals, destination, connection, and duration of stay. I've flown from London to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific and it was a direct flight, which was better than the last time I did. This trip lasted 16 hours but last time it took more than a day with all the connections and waiting we did in the airports. I would have thought an aircraft needs refuelling after something like 12 hours but I guess I was wrong seeing we made it there in one piece. I must say, I usually find them around 3% more than the other airlines but I think it is worth it.
Obviously, it depends most on what class you travel in and they can vary dramaticly. From the last time I checked, first class is something like 3-4 times more expensive but there are large leather seats with more leg room and fold our for you to sleep in. You'll get even better service (if that's possible) and the flight will be extremely luxrious and probably be the most pleasant flight you will ever experience.
Finally, The Conclusion
Overall, I rate this a 5 star airline in case you haven't already guessed because of everything. Their comfort, service, co-operative staff, and reliability. They are excellent and I would think paying a little extra is worth it as it gives you a stress and worry free flight. This just makes me think that this airline is better than most.
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Advantages: Great service, excellent on-board entertainment, and very efficient in all ways!. Disadvantages: Maybe slightly overpriced but competes well against British Airways long haul flights!.
Aug 17th, 2002
very helpful by (100%):
