Three A350s and a Dreamliner: Regional Flights in Asia with SQ, TG and CX

[yflyer]

I headed to the gate of my CX flight to BKK. The gate was located at the far end of Changi T4...



There was a smoking room close to the gate...



As well as a small retro arcade...



...which probably catered more to old fogies (Who could actually remember playing Space Invaders and Pac Man at 20 cents or 40 cents a pop) than to today's kids weaned on a diet of iPhone and Android apps...

[yflyer]

My flight, CX712, was a 1.25pm departure.

The gate area at G18 was very open and spacious...



Multiple boarding lanes, depending on where you were in the boarding packing order...



Unlike some airports overseas, no-one stood in line prior to boarding...there was enough seating for everyone. If anything, on that day, the gate agents had to persuade folks to get up from their comfy seats when it was time to board the plane...

At the gate, Cathay Pacific's Airbus A350-900 rego B-LRO, a 2+ year old aircraft...



Another shot of this beautiful plane, with the other Changi Airport terminals, and iconic control tower, in the background, showing the location of T4 in relation to the other terminals...

[yflyer]

I boarded together with Business Class and Oneworld Sapphire pax...



This was a 3-class aircraft, with Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy cabins...

The J cabin had the highly regarded Cirrus Business Class seats in a 1-2-1 reverse herringbone configuration, with every J seat having aisle access...



Middle J seats...



These were excellent J seats, which reclined fully flat...



The Premium Economy cabin was next, laid out 2-4-2...



The Economy cabin was laid out 3-3-3...

[yflyer]

My ticket was a Y ticket, and I had previously checked in online, however, when I looked at my CX app on my iPhone before departing, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my seat was now a PEY seat. The paper boarding pass I picked up at the airport confirmed that I had indeed been bumped up a cabin class.

No fuss, no notification: CX had simply and stealthily upgraded me to Premium Economy. Joy!

My PEY seat was a bulkhead window seat...



I would have two windows to look out of on today's flight...



This was a very comfortable seat, with good recline, and extendable calf/foot rest...



This was a calf/footrest that could be extended with a push of a button...





...the footrest could be extended...



...then the whole calf rest extended further downwards if required...

[yflyer]

There was a reading light...



...and a retractable drink table...







The dining/work table was stowed in the armrest...





Compartment beside the seat to stow small items such as tablets or reading material...

[yflyer]

The large IFE touchscreen was mounted on the bulkhead...



Noise cancelling headphones...



Nice to have noise cancelling headphones, and these were better than Y headsets, but I did not find the sound quality particularly good, and stuck with my Shure earbuds.

IFE controller, in case one did not feel like stretching to reach the screen...





Ample USB and A/C power...



CX inflight magazine in a sealed plastic bag...



Wifi information card...

[yflyer]

Good legroom in the bulkhead PEY seats. No infants in the PEY cabin today...



The non-bulkhead PEY seats also had decent legroom....





PEY Seatback IFE....



In a non-bulkhead row, reclining the PEY seat would eat into the space of the person behind you, perhaps just a little.

The bathrooms (Located in the Y cabin)...



Bathroom amenities...

[yflyer]

The CX Safety Video, utilizing both live action and animated characters, was straight and to the point. Thumbs up. The computer animated passengers in an otherwise live video were a little disconcerting, though...



Pushback and taxi...



...and another powerful but quiet take-off on Runway 20C...



A long left run after take-off...



...which took us over Changi Airport once again, with Terminal 4, construction of the T5 area, visible once again, far below...

[yflyer]

Flight time today was just under 2 hours...



...with our flight path taking us over the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, and then the Gulf of Thailand...



We climbed to cruising altitude...



There were cameras on this A350...



The tail cam was not operating, but the nose cam was...

[yflyer]

I browsed the IFE...this was a state-of-the-art, and very user friendly, touch screen system...



I re-watched parts of Ip Man 3...



The music selection was very good too...I took the opportunity to listen, once again, to Yo-Yo Ma's latest recording of the Bach Cello Suites (Also available on SQ's IFE, by the way...)...



Movies, TV and music aside, there were also TV news channels, although these didn't seem to be available on this flight...

[yflyer]

Lunch was served on this flight...



This PEY meal looked indistinguishable from a Y meai...



Two choices of main were offered, I picked the pasta...



...with a glass of red wine to go with it.



As on CX Y meal trays, there was no appetiser, just fruit.

There is a lot of variation across airlines when it comes to PEY catering, CX (And SQ) go with catering that is similar to Y, while QF gives you a PEY meal approaching business class standards. Other airlines, like BA, go in-between, with a J-class main with the first meal service...



The pasta was fine, but unremarkable...



Dessert was Haagen Daz ice cream...



I ended my meal with a cup of coffee...



Apart from dessert, I thought this was quite an average meal, even by Y standards, let alone PEY.

[yflyer]

Cabin ambience in PEY was good...





Y cabin ambience on this very full flight was fine as well...





With the A350 cabin feeling marginally more spacious than a 787 cabin...

[yflyer]

Before long, we were at the top of descent into BKK...



Some very dark clouds over BKK...



We flew northeast, to the east of BKK...



...before a long left turn over green fields and farmland, towards the southwest, for our final approach and landing on Runway 19R...



Out my left window I saw a thunderstorm ahead...were we going to land in that?



Fortunately, the storm clouds were moving fast, and had cleared the airport by the time we landed...



...although there was still some rain over the airport as we taxi'ed to the gate.





By the time I left the arrival hall and headed landside, it was all clear.



Overall a very good flight on Cathay's A350 in PEY.

I found the PEY seat and cabin to be superb. The seats looked wide, comfortable and luxurious. It was all perception, but the CX PEY seats looked larger and more comfortable than SQ's A350 PEY. As a hard product, I found that I much preferred the CX A350 PEY seat to the equivalent SQ A350 PEY seat.

Cabin service was good as well. The only downsides were the average catering (Essentially the same as Y catering), and the fact that you had to pass through part of the Y cabin to use the restrooms.

As for the overall travel experience, I found Changi T4 and the CX Lounge to be wonderful, and really liked the passenger experience in T4 when travelling CX.

To be continued!

[yflyer]

Continuing with the TR...

I spent a couple of nights at the Bangkok Marriott Sukhumvit, which I have already covered in an earlier segment of this TR.

On the first night of my 2nd stay there, I made it a point to head up to the rooftop bar early enough to watch the sun set...



A very pleasant way to spend part (or all...) of the evening.



My flight out of Bangkok 2 days later was CX616, BKK-HKG. This was an early morning 6.35am departure, which meant a 3.30am wake-up call and a 4am car ride to the airport...

The airport was surprisingly busy at 4.33am in the morning, when the picture below was taken...



Perhaps that was why the concierge at the Marriott insisted that I had to arrive 2 hours prior to my international departure.



The CX check-in counters...



Security and passport control queues at that hour in the morning were not long (Compared to the long queues during daytime hours) but there were queues.



Still, I finished formalities with quite a bit of buffer time, and this gave me a little time to visit the CX Lounge in BKK.

In any event, if I were to do the same flight again in the future, I would probably still want to leave the hotel at around the same time (Or maybe 15 min later, at 4.15am), just to play safe.

[yflyer]

The CX departure gates and lounge were at Concourse G, quite a distance from the main passport control area.



I headed to the CX Lounge...



This was not a huge lounge, but I thought it was an impressive size for an outstation lounge.



The dark-toned decor was stylish and elegant...



...and very similar to the current decor theme in other CX lounges, including the HKG lounges...



I found this to be a very pleasant lounge to spend time in...with the large glass windows looking out into the concourse contributing to the sense of space and openness in the lounge...