While airlines strive to have fleet consistency, it’s quite normal for airlines not to hold too tightly to this, and to have anomalies on their fleet as they take on aircraft from other airlines. For example, Turkish Airlines operates A350s that have interiors meant for Aeroflot, and separately have their own A350s with a different cabin product. Qatar Airways has 777s with QSuites, though they also inherited some 777s from Cathay Pacific, and kept Cathay Pacific’s interiors. This happens more often with narrowbodies, given that passengers care less about product consistency when it comes to flying shorthaul (especially in economy).
However, Hong Kong Airlines seems to take this to the extreme. When writing my review of Hong Kong Airlines’ A321 economy class product, I realised exactly how much of a hodge-podge the airline’s fleet is, especially on their narrowbody aircraft. I thought this was fun to take a look at and share my thoughts on.
Hong Kong Airlines’ Slight A330 Fleet Variance
Hong Kong Airlines has seven passenger A330s in operation, and there’s a fairly standard configuration across their fleet. Five of their A330s have their standard staggered seats in business class and Weber 5751 economy class, a configuration the airline has had for many years.
Hong Kong Airlines’ A330 interiors on most aircraft
However, two of the airline’s A330s feature newer seats, as they used to belong to Tianjin Airlines. Namely, they feature reverse herringbone seats and Recaro CL3710 seats (which Hong Kong Airlines used to feature on their A350s, as pictured below).
Hong Kong Airlines A350 Business and Economy Class (their newest A330 seats have identical seats)
That’s a very reasonable fleet variance, and I’d go as far as to say it’s a good level of expectation management.
Hong Kong Airlines’ Much Wilder A320 Fleet Variance
Here’s where things get interesting.
Most of Hong Kong Airlines’ A320 fleet features either 8 business class seats and 144 economy class seats, or an all-economy configuration consisting of 174 economy class seats. I believe that both of these configurations have more or less the same seats in economy. These are the A320 seats I’m used to at Hong Kong Airlines – they’re fairly well-padded, and have the airline’s signature red upholstery. I’ve taken the below pictures from KN Aviation (Keishi’s stuff is great, by the way, and I’d highly recommend reading his reviews) – I probably should piece together a review of Hong Kong Airlines’ A330 and A320 business class soon, especially since their rebound.
Hong Kong Airlines A320 Business and Economy Class (credit: KN Aviation)
One of their A320s (B-LPY) was pinched off China Eastern in December 2024, and also features 8 business class seats, but has 150 economy seats (that’s six more). You won’t need to count the economy seats to notice the difference, though…the cabin colours are completely different. I’ve taken the below pictures from Billy Is Travelling, who flew this plane from Hong Kong to Osaka.
Hong Kong Airlines’ A320 Business and Economy Class
Then the airline has two A320s (B-LPS and B-LPT), which the airline acquired from Tigerair in 2024. These have 180 seats, and it’s quite clear that the airline didn’t update them since they got these seats. The seats are much less comfortable with 28-29″ pitch, though the actual seats are not that huge of a difference compared to the mainline A320s (and I wouldn’t consider it that major of a downgrade).
Hong Kong Airlines’ ex-Tigerair A320s
Then there’s one case that I find extremely interesting, and will dedicate a section to below.
Hong Kong Airlines’ 150-seat A320 with 34″ pitch
One of Hong Kong Airlines’ A320s, B-LPU, only has 150 seats onboard their A320. That’s a whole 24 seats less than the standard configuration, and 30 seats less than the Tigerair configuration – it’s even fewer seats than the configuration with business class, even though this A320 is in an all-economy configuration. What’s going on?
Well, this is because Hong Kong Airlines acquired this A320 from Japanese premium low-cost hybrid airline StarFlyer, which operates A320s with 34″ pitch (that airline in itself is super interesting, and one that’s caught my eye recently). Hong Kong Airlines evidently just took the plane without reconfiguring it, and based on legroom and seat ergonomics alone, this is undoubtedly the best seat in Hong Kong Airlines’ network.
Hong Kong Airlines A320 Economy Class (source: @k3vinq on Threads, who has a brief review of his flight in Chinese)
These roomy A320s even have PTVs, though Hong Kong Airlines seems to turn them off in this case (instead of uploading their own entertainment system).
Hong Kong Airlines A320 Economy Class (source: @cheapflightradar on Threads)
How is this operationally possible?
I have so many questions about how Hong Kong Airlines can manage to operate with such a varying fleet size. Even with their A330 fleet, their planes have a differing number of seats in business and economy class, so I’m sure any last-minute equipment swaps would have to factor that in.
But what if an A320 goes inoperable, or you need an equipment swap? What if the 150-seat B-LPU is swapped into a flight it wasn’t originally meant to operate? Do 24 passengers just get knocked onto the next flight? Or does B-LPU only operate certain routes? From what I see on FlightRadar24, it’s not like any routes are specifically assigned to be operated by B-LPU, as it just seems to be deployed across the network like any other aircraft.
What in the Ryanair is going on here?
Also, surely the cost of replacing the seats with Hong Kong Airlines’ own stock would’ve quickly been made up by the fact that Hong Kong Airlines is making money back on the 24 extra seats in the cabin? None of this fleet inconsistency makes sense to me.
Conclusion
Almost all airlines will have some sort of fleet inconsistency across aircraft, but I’ve never seen an airline do it the way Hong Kong Airlines does it. There’s a chance that you might be on an ex-Tigerair A320 with 28″ seat pitch, or an ex-StarFlyer A320 with 34″ seat pitch. I just have so many questions about how the airline works from an operational perspective, especially when it comes to fleet allocation and equipment swaps.
Do you have any intel on how Hong Kong Airlines manages to make this fleet inconsistency work?
