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THE ALVIATOR'S VERDICT
A surprisingly aging product given that the seat is not that old, though the seat design is ergonomic. I found catering to be a step down compared to the last time I flew this route in economy |
3.5
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In September 2025, I flew Cathay Pacific’s regional 777 economy class from Hong Kong to Tokyo Haneda. This was my first time flying Cathay Pacific’s regional economy class in six years – I’d last flown it from Tokyo Narita to Hong Kong in the same configuration. I had had the privilege of sharing this flight with J, and this was the first time we’d flown an Asian carrier together.
I’m the first person to compliment Cathay Pacific’s economy class cabin designers for their ergonomic seat design, though I was surprised that the product was showing its age, from the slow entertainment system to the non-functioning 110V power ports at my seat. Cathay Pacific does feature fleetwide WiFi which I appreciate, though I was perhaps not as blown away as I was hoping.
Booking Cathay Pacific’s 777 Economy Class
I redeemed two award seats in economy using Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles, which cost 12,500 miles and HK$436 (£41) in taxes each. The itinerary I booked was as follows:
Cathay Pacific 542 Hong Kong – Tokyo Haneda dep. 16:20 arr. 21:35 [Economy Class]
While I booked all of my other flights in this itinerary to review new cabin products, this flight simply worked the best for our schedule.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Ground Experience
This was J’s first time departing out of Hong Kong Airport, so I was keen to show her around. We didn’t have Cathay Pacific lounge access this time round, though I did manage to show her Hong Kong Airport’s Skybridge, where we spent some time planespotting (I’m not really sure how she puts up with me).
View from Hong Kong Airport Skybridge
I had an invite to the Plaza Premium First lounge at Hong Kong Airport, so we headed there for a bit. Plaza Premium provided a buggy for us to get to our gate, which we took up.
Our flight today would be operated by B-HNP, a 20-year-old regional 777. Unbeknownst to me, this aircraft featured Cathay Pacific’s refreshed regional business class – unfortunately I didn’t get to sample this on my return flight from Seoul Incheon, which was operated by a 777 that hadn’t undergone the refresh yet.
Cathay Pacific 777 at Hong Kong Airport
Boarding started bang on time at 15:40, 40 minutes ahead of our 16:20 flight. Oneworld Emerald passengers were invited to board first, followed by Oneworld Sapphire and business class passengers, followed by economy class passengers.
Cathay Pacific Flight CX542
Thursday, September 11, 2025
Origin: Hong Kong (HKG) Gate: 26 Dep: 16:20 (16:20)
Destination: Tokyo Haneda (HND) T: 3 Gate: 145 Arr: 21:35 (23:55)
Duration: 4 hr 15 min (6 hr 35 min)
Aircraft: Boeing 777-300 Reg: B-HNP
Seat: 79C (Economy Class)
We entered through the second set of doors, and turned right towards Cathay Pacific’s largest economy cabin, featuring a whopping 396 seats.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Cabin and Seat
Cathay Pacific’s 777s feature economy class seats in a 3-4-3 configuration, as is industry standard nowadays. This is laid out across three behemoth cabins – the forwardmost cabin features 141 seats, followed by another cabin of 140 seats, and the rearmost cabin features 115 seats.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Cabin
While the rearmost cabin is the smallest of the three, it still feels plenty big, and there isn’t a particular size advantage to sitting in either cabin.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Cabin
As we had redeemed miles for this flight, our tickets didn’t come with free seat selection – selecting a seat would’ve gone from HK$140 (£13.30) per seat. However, at check-in, I was able to snag seats 79A and 79C for myself and J. This is the only “duo” seat available in this cabin, and also had the perk of being at the very back, which is my preference.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Seats 79A and 79C
While most of the cabin is laid out in a 3-4-3 configuration, the fuselage tapers towards the back of the plane, so the “D” seat disappears. You might want to avoid seat 75D, which often gets bumped into during the flight.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Cabin
At row 79, we found our seats with a six-way adjustable headrest, and a decent amount of recline.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Recline
One thing I consistently appreciate about Cathay Pacific’s seats is the thoughtful addition of storage, and that’s true here. There’s a flip-out storage compartment for AirPods or glasses, which doubles as a tablet holder. and a cupholder (your items inside won’t fall out, unless you’re keeping something very big and thin, such as a passport). There’s also a nifty pouch by the seat pocket for a phone, and a USB-A and a mini-DIN port (though no USB-C port as you’d expect, since these seats came out in 2017). The USB ports at both mine and J’s seats worked, though charged quite slowly.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Storage Compartment
The bi-fold tray table was sturdy, and when fully deployed, easily large enough to handle a laptop.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Tray Table
Each seat also featured a power port. Unfortunately, in our back row seats, these 110V power ports were never activated. In fact, I tried to use the power ports of a different seat at some point in the flight, and those didn’t seem to be working either. It’s a little disappointing that so many of the power ports were down on this 777, which was reconfigured in December 2019.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Power Ports
I know that we like to give a bashing of 10-abreast economy seats on a 777, though at this point I have no width complaints, and am happy to accept it as the new industry standard. If Cathay Pacific can fly 40 more passengers particularly on these regional planes on every flight, good for them. I found the seat to have good enough padding, and was ergonomically designed, though was a little sad that it was showing its age (especially with the power port situation).
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Amenities
Cathay Pacific hands out amenities on request on shorthaul flights in economy. On this flight, a pillow and blanket were provided on request, whereas headsets were provided to all passengers.
I never managed to flag down a flight attendant for a pillow, though found the blanket I was offered to be more than substantial.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Blanket
Meanwhile, the headsets were as bad as you’d expect in economy, though I didn’t use them throughout the flight.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Headset
I do miss that this is the bare minimum when flying shorthaul intra-Asia, given that this set of amenities is more than the finest of carriers offer when flying intra-Europe. I had no complaints about any of the amenities on offer.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Lavatory
Cathay Pacific’s regional 777s feature ten lavatories, eight of which economy passengers are welcome to use. That’s around one lavatory for every 50 passengers, which is more or less standard for economy.
The lavatories themselves were very standard for a 777, on the small side, and featured Nobility toiletries.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Lavatory
Taking off from Hong Kong Airport
Boarding was complete at around 4:10 PM. The load factor wasn’t massive on this flight, especially in the rear cabins – lots of the middle seats in particular were empty. Across us was a Cathay Pacific Diamond member who evidently shared my love for sitting the back row, though was a little less nice to flight attendants – he generally snapped orders, and would talk quite loudly at himself.
The captain came onto the PA to welcome us onboard, announcing our 3h 45m flight time. The inflight service manager then came onto the PA echoing the captain’s welcome, as well as reminding us that lithium batteries and power banks were prohibited to be used inflight (this is after a scare happened earlier in 2025, when an Air Busan flight caught fire on the ground because of a power bank failure). The crew then came round handing out pillows and blankets to passengers who wanted them.
We pushed back just short of 4:20 PM, saying goodbye to the 777-300ER (sporting the new Aria interiors) next to us that had just landed from Beijing.
Cathay Pacific 777 at Hong Kong Airport
Taxiing at Hong Kong Airport is always a joy, given the diversity of widebody aircraft there (since so many Asian carriers fly widebodies over on the short flight to Hong Kong). We passed a British Airways A350 and a Bangkok Airways A319, amongst other Cathay Pacific widebody aircraft.
Taxiing at Hong Kong Airport
We took off at around 4:35 PM from runway 07R, and the left side afforded great views of the airport upon our departure.
Taking off from Hong Kong Airport
As we took off, we headed rightwards and passed Hong Kong Island, which meant that we had awesome views of the island from the left. It was fun showing J Hong Kong from a bird’s eye view, including trying to point out the school I grew up in (and failing).
Climbout from Hong Kong Airport
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Meal Service
Around 20 minutes after takeoff, the crew came around handing out some packaged peanuts and a drinks service, signalling the start of the meal service.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Meal Service Nuts
We were at the back of the economy class cabin, and we were served our meal around 45 minutes after the initial nuts were given. I believe that the flight attendants served the meals front-to-back on this flight. We were also provided another choice of drinks, including water, apple and orange juice, soft drinks, or beer.
We were offered the choice between chicken and potatoes, and a pork with rice dish. I went for the chicken with potatoes, which was a Western-style chicken cacciatore dish of sorts. The dish was tasty, though I miss that Cathay Pacific used to serve soba noodles on the side for economy passengers, which has been replaced by a (still tasty) yam and sesame salad.
A further win was that the ice cream was a stellar temperature for eating, and the fruit on offer was good as well.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Meal
J had the pork with rice, which was a more Chinese-style minced pork dish, served with the same sides. She enjoyed the dish was well.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Meal
I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that Cathay Pacific now uses metal cutlery in economy, which wasn’t the case on my last flight with them.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Metal Cutlery
The meal was good, though I felt like the food quality on a similar flight I had a few years back was better. I was surprised by the fact that neither of the options on offer was Japanese – while I like airlines that showcase food from their hometown, Cathay Pacific used to consistently have a tasty Japanese option onboard their flights, which I missed this time round.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Entertainment System
I’ve always known Cathay Pacific to have one of the world’s best entertainment systems, so I was perhaps a bit surprised that there wasn’t a huge choice of movies and TV shows to watch on this flight. J noted that there wasn’t a huge choice of blockbuster movies and TV shows, and the UI itself was rather unresponsive. This is a far cry from what I experienced on some of Cathay Pacific’s newest planes, including their A350s and their new 777s – that being said, I’m the last person to properly appreciate an inflight entertainment system’s selection, so perhaps I’d just overhyped Cathay Pacific’s entertainment system all along? Let me know.
I forgot to take photos of the entertainment system on this flight, though snapped some on a subsequent flight in business class, featuring similarly low-definition screens, and an even lower-definition belly camera (it must’ve been around 144p in video quality).
Cathay Pacific 777 Entertainment System
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class WiFi
Cathay Pacific’s 777s feature WiFi, which cost US$9.95 (HK$77/£7.38) for a one-hour pass, and US$12.95 (HK$101/£9.61) for a full-flight pass. I ended up purchasing a full-flight pass to use, and it measured 7.84 Mbps down, and 3 Mbps up.
While WiFi worked great and I appreciated the option, I wish Cathay Pacific had free messaging for economy and premium economy passengers.
Cruising on the way to Haneda Airport
J and I finished our meals quite swiftly. She ended up watching a movie, while I connected to the WiFi and worked for a while. I really liked this duo of seats near the back – not only could we recline to our hearts’ content, but we didn’t have a seatmate either whenever we needed to use the bathroom. While there were bathrooms behind, there was also an exit door separating our seats from the closest bathroom, so we weren’t prone to hearing constant flushing noises throughout the flight either.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Reclined Seats
Being on the left side also meant that we had a beautiful sunset as we neared Haneda.
Sunset enroute to Haneda Airport
Around 45 minutes after our meal was served the crew came round to clear our trays. I heard the person across asking for a Sapporo beer, and I figured I’d do the same. It’s nice that this is on offer in economy on Cathay Pacific flights.
Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class Sapporo Beer
Landing into Haneda Airport
The rest of the flight went by quite eventfully, and at around 8:55 PM Japan time, the cabin was prepared for arrival. We ended up touching down into a very rainy Haneda at 9:20 PM, and there was almost zero visibility, due to the rainstorm that was there during the time.
Landing into Haneda Airport
In fact, the rain and thunder was so bad that we were forced to ground stop at Haneda Airport, as it was a genuine occupational hazard for many of the ground crew to work at the time. We were given an estimated ground stop time of 15 minutes, and that was very quickly extended to two hours. The captain kept us updated, and said that the seatbelt sign would be kept on, though we could use the bathroom if we wished.
The captain also mentioned that the crew would come around to serve drinks, though that never happened. He mentioned that all of the other aircraft at Haneda were under the same predicament – according to Flightradar24, there was even a plane bound for Komatsu (an hour away) that had been on the ground for four hours!
Good news came at around 11:50 PM, 2h 30m after we landed, and we were one of the first aircraft to reach a stand. While immigration and baggage claim were quick, I can’t imagine the same would’ve been true once the last of the aircraft parked at the gate.
We’d just missed the last Keikyu Line out of Haneda, though thankfully were able to get a coach out to Shinjuku, where we took a cab to the capsule hotel where we’d be staying the night.
Conclusion: Cathay Pacific 777 Economy Class
Cathay Pacific’s 777s feature ergonomic and comfortable seats, and they’re comfortable enough that I don’t mind the 10-abreast layout. Storage is good, though I was a little annoyed about the wear and tear, including the inoperable power ports.
As for the economy class soft product, obviously it’s a treat to fly intra-Asia, where a full meal service is something you can take for granted. However, there was nothing particularly suggesting that this was one of the best economy class products in the world – food was alright (probably meal deal quality), there wasn’t much else in the way of the soft product, and while I appreciated the choice of Sapporo beer, it’s not particularly expensive in Hong Kong.
I’m flying Cathay Pacific in longhaul economy onboard one of their newest 777s soons, and am keen to see what makes their economy class product stand out as one of the best in the world.
Have you flown Cathay Pacific’s regional economy class before?
