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THE ALVIATOR'S VERDICT
Unfortunately I "cheated" this flight by being moved to an exit row seat with nobody anywhere near me, though the flight was surprisingly unremarkable (in a good way) with good buy-on-board food options, and well-executed Filipino flair |
4.0
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During my crazy journey to Hong Kong, I decided to try and get some reviews of a couple of low-cost airlines I’d been meaning to fly. One of these airlines was Cebu Pacific, the operator of one of the world’s densest planes. The airline operates a fleet of 11 A330neos – not only are they in an all-economy configuration, but the airline had elected to install these planes in a 3-3-3 configuration, as opposed to the industry-standard 2-4-2 configuration.
There are multiple aircraft types that offer a denser configuration in economy – the 777 and 787 come to mind. For example, the 777 was designed to have 9 seats across, though many airlines put 10; similarly, the industry standard for a 787 has shifted to a 9-abreast configuration instead of its originally designed 8-abreast. However, not many airlines have chosen to do a similar shift with the A330, as seats become a mere 16.5 inches wide (compared to 17-17.5 inches on the other jets, and 18 being the industry standard). As you’d expect, however, Cebu Pacific did take the opportunity to maximise revenue. This isn’t just so they can fit leisure travellers on their planes – a lot of cost-conscious travellers from the Philippines go overseas to work in Dubai, where the aircraft basically serves as a shuttle for these overseas workers.
I’ve flown Cebu Pacific before, back when they had similarly configured A330-300s – while I remember it being extremely tight, as I was on a school trip back then, I wasn’t able to review the airline properly at the time. Unfortunately this time I had to cheat – my flight ended up being so empty that I had to be moved to one of the exit row seats (where I still had the row to myself), as at least one passenger has to be seated there as a safety measure. However, I figured I’d still write a full review, including the booking process, seat, and onboard service, including their buy-on-board selection.
Booking Cebu Pacific’s A330neo
My one-way Cebu Pacific ticket from Hong Kong to Manila cost HK$471 (£45.7). This included an incredulously low base fare of HK$1 (around 9.7p in GBP), topped up by HK$470 worth of surcharges, such as a Hong Kong Airport Construction Fee, Airport Passenger Security Charge, Air Passenger Departure Tax, and a Cebu Pacific fuel surcharge. Yikes.
I selected a Premium seat for HK$145 (£14.07), which gave me a couple of inches of extra legroom, as well as priority boarding (marketed as GoAhead). For comparison, a Standard Plus seat is near the front of the plane and costs HK$105 (£10.19), and a Standard seat costs HK$75 (£7.28).
As you’d expect for an ultra-low cost carrier, there were a plethora of add-ons, from a “free cancellation” add-on for HK$230 (£22.32), to meals, to seat selection, to baggage. I pre-ordered a meal, which set me back HK$65 (£6.30).
It’s worth noting that Cebu Pacific does some fare bundles as well. In this case I just wanted to select a seat and was day-tripping in Manila, so I got a GO Basic fare and just paid the seat selection fee.
The itinerary for this flight was as follows:
12/08/24 Cebu Pacific 5J 273 Hong Kong – Manila dep. 09:25 arr. 11:50 [Standard Class]
Cebu Pacific’s Ground Experience at Hong Kong Airport
Unfortunately while I was able to check-in online, I wasn’t able to get my boarding pass online, and was asked to get it at Hong Kong Airport. Cebu Pacific uses Aisle L at Hong Kong Airport, and it wasn’t pretty by the time I got there – there was one flight to Cebu leaving around the same time as us, and the check-in desks were rammed with queues.
Cebu Pacific check-in desks Hong Kong Airport
Strangely I did manage to print my boarding pass at one of the kiosks, which meant that I could skip this long line that had formed. I suppose that most people were checking in a bag, though even those that had checked in online had access to a queue that wasn’t nearly as long. I’d assume that many people flying this route wouldn’t naturally know about online check-in?
Cebu Pacific Check-In at Hong Kong Airport
For context, my dad and I were day-tripping to Manila together, though I flew him out in Cathay Pacific business class (he was flying back with me on HK Express, and I figured one low-cost airline was enough for a day’s work). He left on the CX 901 leaving at 9 AM, and I put myself on 5J 273, which left 25 minutes later, at 9:25 AM. Of course this arrangement wouldn’t be spicy enough if everything worked out as planned, though I’ll get into the details of that later.
After my dad and I went to the Kyra Lounge Hong Kong, I sent him off, before heading to gate 46 where my flight was departing. The gate area was already quite full with passengers, though the plane was still nowhere to be seen.
Cebu Pacific Departure Gate at Hong Kong Airport
Soon enough our A330neo did arrive though – this was the very first A330neo I’d be flying, and what a way to debut as well! This was RP-C3902, a plane just short of three years old at the time of flying, and I had a good view of it pulling into gate 46 as it arrived from Manila after a very early (though delayed) 5:40 AM flight. This also meant that our original 8:40 AM departure time wouldn’t be happening, as it was 8:50 AM by the time the plane had pulled into the gate.
Cebu Pacific A330neo at Hong Kong Airport
It was announced that boarding had been pushed back at the gate area, though at many points there were “false starts” for boarding, with people lining up at the gate, only to be told to take a seat. I was particularly aware that the gate agents weren’t the nicest, and in fact were quite rude. Many families hire domestic helpers in the Philippines in Hong Kong, and it’s a sad reality that there’s generally a bit of a power parity between Hong Kongers and English-second-language Filipino domestic helpers. I wasn’t pleased with the fact that the gate agents only propagated this, and yelled instructions and shooed people back to their seats.
Cebu Pacific Boarding Gate at Hong Kong Airport
Boarding did eventually start at 9:25 AM, right around our departure time. This began with those with GoAhead priority boarding benefits, including myself.
Cebu Pacific Flight 5J273
Monday, August 12, 2024
Origin: Hong Kong (HKG) T: 1 Gate: 46 Dep: 09:25 (11:20)
Destination: Manila (MNL) T: 3 Gate: 114 Arr: 11:50 (13:15)
Duration: 2 hr 25 min (1 hr 55 min)
Aircraft: Airbus A330-900neo Reg: RP-C3902
Seat: 4A/1H/2J (Standard Class)
I headed in through the forward door – the aircraft was boarding through the first and second set of doors.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Cabin and Seat
Yowzers, what a load of seats! Cebu Pacific’s A330neos feature 459 seats laid out in a 3-3-3 configuration. These seats are split across three cabins: the smallest forward cabin features 118 seats, the middle cabin features 189 seats, and the rear cabin features 152 seats.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Cabin
I’m not sure how to do justice to exactly how many seats there are in the cabin, so here are a couple more photos of the cabin before anyone else boarded (bearing in mind that the cabin in the foreground is the smallest of the three).
Cebu Pacific A330neo Cabin
I managed to spot the window seats in row 1, 1B and 1C (1A doesn’t exist, due to the taper of the fuselage). I’m not sure I’d want to sit here, given how many people pass you during the boarding process.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Seats 1B and 1C
Instead, I’d assigned myself seat 4A, a window seat on the (surprise!) fourth row of the cabin. This was the last row of “Premium” seating – apparently they feature a couple extra inches of legroom, which would bring it to 32″ seat pitch instead of the default 30″.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Seat 4A
I didn’t find legroom in the premium seats to be too bad, though saying it was generous would be a bit of a stretch.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Legroom
One thing I was pleased to see was that there were both USB-A and USB-C power ports between seats. It’s nice to be able to charge your phone, albeit the fact that there’s no reason to use it (there’s no WiFi or streaming entertainment, or anything).
Cebu Pacific A330neo Power Ports
There’s also a tray table that folds out from the seat in front.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Tray Table
These seats are otherwise no-frills – there’s no adjustable headrest, and no recline function. Apparently each seat only weighs 8 kg, making this one of the lowest-carbon footprint seats that you can probably find in the air. This was obviously fine for my short sub-2 hour flight from Hong Kong to Manila, though I imagine I’d feel differently on a longhaul flight from Manila to Melbourne or Dubai.
Since it was my first time on an A330neo, I also enjoyed some of the different elements I hadn’t seen on other aircraft before, including a fancy mosaic-style ceiling lighting panel.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Lighting Panel
The boarding music playing was Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift – Cebu Pacific always plays pop music during the boarding process. I also noted that the crew were very friendly, and in high spirits – I proactively told one of the crewmembers that I really liked planes (as I was taking a lot of cabin photos), and he asked what I was doing in the Philippines, even being happy to give recommendations of places to eat on my day trip. I even saw a crewmember take a selfie with a passenger heading onboard the plane.
Being moved to an exit row seat on Cebu Pacific’s A330neo
Boarding was complete at around 9:45 AM – less because of an ultra-efficient boarding process, and more because the aircraft was less than half full. It’s worth noting that Cebu Pacific’s automatic seating algorithm had rear-loaded the plane – the rear felt significantly more full than the front did.
A friendly crew member asked if I would be happy to move to the emergency exit row in row 1, to which I obliged. I was moved to seat 1J – not proximate to a window, though still close enough that I could look out of it.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Seat 1J
While there’s no under-seat storage space at seat 1J, legroom isn’t an issue, as there’s nothing situated in front. On top of that, unlike seats 1B and 1C, passengers also don’t board though this door, so you’ve got plenty of space during takeoff and landing. This still wouldn’t be my first choice (I like my floor space, and even if not I would’ve chosen the seat 2K behind, which has a similar amount of leg space), though I didn’t mind sitting here for the course of the flight.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Seat 1J
Turns out I could’ve sat in seat 2K as well, which also classified as an extra-legroom seat (despite not being in row 1). I moved to seat 2K for the meal service, and stayed there for landing.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Lavatories
The Cebu Pacific A330neo has 7 lavatories – two at the front, three between the middle and rear cabins, and a further two at the back of the plane. That makes a 1:65 passenger to lavatory ratio, which honestly could be worse for a plane of this size.
The forward lavatories were standard A330 lavatories, except for the fact that one of the walls was banana yellow.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Lavatory
Ground Delay and Taking Off from Hong Kong Airport
At around 10 AM the captain came onto the PA and welcomed us onboard, announcing our flying time of 1h 45m. He also mentioned that we were waiting on information and clearance for our pushback, and quoted a 10-15 minute waiting time, and would keep us updated. The safety video was then screened from videos that folded out from the ceiling.
Unfortunately at 10:25 AM the captain came back and said that we had an updated assigned pushback time from the airport of 11:10 AM. This was quite close to when my dad would be landing in Manila – a bit of a fail. Well, there was not much I could do but wait now, so I had a bit of a look at places that my dad could go to while he waited to me.
View of runway from gate 46
My fellow passengers weren’t best pleased, with one particularly amusing interaction between a non-English first language passenger and the crewmember:
Passenger: Why are we delayed so long?
Cabin crew: The airport has given us a later departure slot, so we will be leaving at 11:10.
Passenger: 11, 10 years… *storms back to seat*
You shouldn’t be taking your anger out on the cabin crew for a delay in any circumstance – they are not responsible for the mechanical and timely operations of your flight.
Anyway, at 11:10 AM, we did eventually push back, beginning our taxi to runway 07R.
Views upon Taxiing to Runway 07R
We eventually did take off at 11:20 AM, making a rightward turn to head southeast towards Manila.
Takeoff from Hong Kong Airport
Touring Cebu Pacific’s A330neo Cabin
After takeoff I briefly walked around the rest of Cebu Pacific’s A330neo. The A330-900neo is 63.66 m long (compared to the 63.60 m A330-300), and it sure did feel like all 63 of these meters were rammed with rows and rows of seats.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Cabin
The back of the plane does taper a bit, so the C and H seats disappear, making for a 2-3-2 configuration.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Cabin
In terms of being on an A330neo, this didn’t feel far too much quieter or comfier than being on a classic A330. I’m not sure if I prefer this aircraft particularly more than the classic A330, though perhaps this dense configuration is not the best way to judge a new aircraft type.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Meal Service
Cebu Pacific advertises a few pre-order meals as an add-on, and these dishes all look quite appealing, from spam nori and seafood in oyster sauce, to beef adobo and pinoy spaghetti. I think this is a pretty good offering in terms of giving local flair, and I thought that the prices were not bad at all.
Cebu Pacific Online Menu
I got a chicken adobo, which was served to me around 10 minutes after takeoff. I gotta say, this was very flavourful, and very good. Stewed meat usually does quite well on an airplane, and this vinegary, soy-based stew was no exception. The parsnips it was served with were good as well, and the meal was also served with a bottle of water.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Meal Service
While some of the airline’s branding elements are a little rough around the edges, I feel like the airline has a surprising amount of attention to detail, down to the cute little graphics on the napkins.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Napkin
Later in the flight, the crew came around handing out a snacks out of a basket, and I got some cheese potato chips, some filled cookies, and a raspberry flavoured red tea. I assume that this was part of their buy-on-board selection that they didn’t get rid of at the time.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Snacks
I think that while European full-service carriers generally have comparable catering to some Asian carriers, there’s still a huge difference between buy-on-board catering on European ultra low-cost carriers (ULCCs) and on Asian ULCCs. What a delicious meal to have, and not for an extortionate price as well.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Service
Flight attendants on this flight were super friendly, and clearly took pride in their country – as aforementioned, I was seated across one of the flight attendants, and he gave me some recommendations on where to get food in Manila (we went to one of those places, and it was super tasty). It was quite evident that many travelling on Cebu Pacific were connecting onwards to Boracay, which the flight attendants were quite knowledgeable about as well. While there’s not much in the way of actual “service”, all buy-on-board options were done efficiently too, and we were even handed out free snacks, which would’ve been unheard of on a European ultra low-cost carrier.
Onboard service on ultra low-cost carriers sure is different in Asia than it is in Europe (e.g. Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air) at the moment. I kind of get it – due to the way European ULCCs generally sprawl across multiple countries (mainly due to the interconnectedness of the Schengen region), there’s not much of a need for carriers to provide a national identity of any sort, whereas Cebu Pacific is unmistakably a Filipino low-cost carrier that wants opportunities to show off its roots. I found the same to be true of the low-cost carriers I flew subsequently as well, and I’m looking forward to doing more similar flying in the near future.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Entertainment and WiFi
Cebu Pacific’s A330neos feature neither entertainment of any sort, or WiFi. I knew this coming in, so just spent some time working on blog posts that I had pre-loaded on my laptop.
Cebu Pacific A330neo Trivia Quiz
At around 12:35 PM, the captain came to announce that we were flying at 33,000 feet, and would begin our descent in 5 minutes, for an approximate touchdown time at 1 PM. At this point, the signature Cebu Pacific trivia quiz was done.
There were three questions asked and Cebu Pacific-themed prizes to be won – I couldn’t actually hear the questions very well over the PA, which is slightly concerning for a brand new A330neo. However, this time they were questions about the Philippines (e.g. population). This is in contrast to my flights in 2017, which tested on very basic acronyms, such as OMG and BRB. I actually would’ve really enjoyed some Cebu Pacific merch, so was sad to not know many of the answers to the questions given.
To be fair, I’m not sure how well these trivia quizzes come across on the airline’s uncomfortably long flights to Dubai – I can imagine they’d be almost irritating by the end of such a long flight in such an uncomfortable seat, particularly if the flight is full and you’re travelling for work.
Landing into Manila Airport
We eventually began our descent into Manila Airport, where the views were absolutely beautiful, and it was also a very nice day with only a few clouds.
Landing into Manila Airport
For those wondering, we first veered left short of approaching Manila, then proceeded to do a 180° turn flying over Manila City, before flying into Ninoy Aquino Airport with the city center on our right (where I was sat).
Once we approached Manila, the city’s more modern skyline became a backdrop for some of the shorter houses in the city outskirts, making this one of the most incredible approaches I’ve had into any city all year.
Landing into Manila Airport
It was eventually time to touch down into Manila Airport’s runway 24, marking my second time into Manila Airport. Interesting traffic there at the time included a Thai Airways 777, EVA 777, and Gulf Air 787, the latter of which I’m particularly keen to fly someday.
Landing in Manila Airport and Traffic
There were some works happening around Terminal 3, so we were told that the engines had to be turned off, so we wouldn’t damage the equipment on the tarmac with jet blasts. This meant that we had to be towed to gate 114. This took a further 10 minutes, and we got to the gate at 1:15 PM, 1h 25m after our scheduled arrival time.
Works at Manila Airport Terminal 3
Gate 114 let us out straight into the immigration area. Unfortunately immigration was a fairly lengthy queue that moved slowly, though it took around an hour to clear.
At around 2:30 PM, we were finally out of the airport. At this point, my dad had gone for a stroll in the nearby Newport Mall, come back to T3, and was enjoying a coffee. We were ready to salvage the rest of our foodie day trip by having the most fun we could.
I’ll dedicate a short post to our day trip for those who are interested, though wasn’t planning on writing about it, so apologies in advance if it’s most the most comprehensive photo essay ever.
Conclusion: Cebu Pacific’s A330neo
There’s no going around the fact that these are some of the least comfortable seats you’ll find in the air, though Cebu Pacific is a quirky airline that does its branding surprisingly well. From the accents of Filipino culture throughout the buy-on-board soft product to the pre-landing trivia, a short flight on Cebu Pacific really could be great, assuming you go fairly all out with adding add-ons to your experience. Practically, while there’s no entertainment or WiFi, I do like that there are USB charging options at every seat, including USB-C charging.
These planes do fly very long distances – the flights to Melbourne, Sydney, or Dubai are around 7-8 hours long. Apart from helping ultra cost-conscious travellers visit the Philippines, these aircraft also serve an important purpose – to help Filipino workers travel abroad (not just ultra long-haul to Dubai, but to Hong Kong and other cities as well) to work in a cost-conscious way, so they can earn remittances for their families. Obviously it’s not great that these aircraft are fitted so uncomfortably, though ultimately it enables the airline to operate a cost structure to keep prices low for these people as well.
As a leisure traveller with a choice I’d definitely avoid this aircraft on flights of over 3 hours (unless I was guaranteed a load factor similarly to what I experienced on this flight), as a full flight on one of these A330s is extremely tight. However, I like the airline, and definitely would fly them again on a shorter Hong Kong – Manila flight. I’d probably seek out their A320s/A321neos, which have industry-standard width seats.
Have you flown Cebu Pacific’s A330neo before, or another A330 fitted in a 3-3-3 configuration? How did you find it?
I also avoid the A330 of Cebu Pacific. The A321 and A320 are fine. Good thing Cebu Pacific does not fly them that much domestically.
You should do a trip to Boracay or El Ndio next ;). Take the Cebu Pacific ATR propeller planes. Cebu Pacific has two subsidiaries that fly those planes Cebgo and newly aquired AirSwift.
Nice review! 😉