Compensation Clinic: Cathay Pacific Business Class Flight FRA-HKG On An Old B777

This week’s Compensation Clinic is about my recent flight with Cathay Pacific from Frankfurt to Hong Kong a few weeks ago, which was a little disappointing given the quality of the aircraft and onboard service.

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Cathay Pacific is usually a very solid airline, but since Covid, the company has changed significantly, especially onboard, as the crew has become noticeably less polished.

Especially long-haul services on Cathay were always my favorite, as they used to have their best crew and aircraft in proper condition, but this most recent Frankfurt-Hong Kong flight didn’t meet expectations at all.

I booked this flight for 84,000 Asia Miles just a few months before the devaluation. I would usually add a connection to my long-haul and have a long ~23h transfer since Cathay doesn’t allow stopovers on mileage tickets anymore, but since this flight arrives at 7 am, that really wasn’t an option this time (not getting up at 4:30 am to take a super early flight the next day).

Frankfurt-Hong Kong on CX 288 is a difficult flight to get on miles and there must be some kind of blocking going on as I almost never see these flights available on AAdvantage or BA/QR Avios while Asia Miles has lots of availability.

Cathay used to have their own lounge at Frankfurt Airport but that one closed in 2019. I first went to the Japan Airlines lounge for a quick lunch:

Cathay’s official lounge partner is a horrendous contract lounge called Priority Lounge, which is accessible to a bunch of other airlines, plus Priority Pass.

The temperature in there was 27 degrees – a sauna – and it was super uncomfortable. I only spent a few minutes in there before going to the gate. Boarding was about to begin 15 minutes later. It wouldn’t be Frankfurt Airport if the escalator weren’t broken. Since I had heavy carry-on luggage, I asked the staff to open the elevator down to the jetbridge for me, as I wouldn’t drag my bags down the stairs.

Boarding was uneventful, and I picked a seat in the smaller compartment with only three rows, as I prefer that one for more privacy. What I noticed immediately was that the cabin had a lot of damages.

The panel to move my seat wasn’t working properly and was all scratched up, the same with my monitor and the bathroom. It was clearly an older aircraft that hasn’t been maintained very well.

I pre-ordered my meal, so there wasn’t much to do in terms of ordering it from the crew. When the appetizer arrived, the Mozzarella was still frozen in the core.

The salad wasn’t very fresh either and had many brown spots. It’s not like that it was rotten but clearly not fresh anymore.

While the crew was courteous, I felt that it was a very junior staff that Cathay assigned for this flight. The processes were somewhat chaotic, and the service was not flowing properly. Usually, Cathay crew also approaches Emerald members for priority meal and drink orders, but that didn’t happen on this flight either.

I decided to open a case with customer care to submit my experience. They took roughly a week to respond and offered 18,000 Asia Miles as compensation.

… In view of your experience, I have arranged to credit 18,000 Asia Miles to your membership account as a goodwill gesture. These miles will be reflected in the next statement. I hope this will go some way towards making up for the inconvenience you faced.

Additionally, you are welcome to submit the pictures for our review by replying to this email.

Thank you for choosing Cathay. We look forward to welcoming you on board soon. …

I still had a few thousand miles in the account, and a BKK-HKG-ICN redemption is 28,000 miles. I would need 3,000 miles more, so I decided to simply ask customer care if they could do 21,000 miles instead of 18k and the representative confirmed they would add another 3k for more. Very fair!

Conclusion

This Cathay Pacific flight from Frankfurt to Hong Kong was my first long-haul on CX for a while. While I fly Cathay often, these are mostly intra-Asia flights between 2-5 hours, and my expectations are more limited.

It wasn’t a terrible flight, but I felt that the old Cathay Pacific standards had gone out the window. It didn’t feel very premium even in Business Class. The B777 cabin was showing severe signs of age and should be much better maintained. Too bad CX cut down their First Class services so much with London being the only European destination that has First these days.

I received 21,000 miles compensation, which is 1/4 of the total award, that’s very fair and generous. I’ll use the miles to redeem them on BKK-HKG-ICN in Business Class this fall.

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