While I mostly write about the passenger experience when flying an airline (particularly on longhaul flights), I’m also a huge airline schedule nerd, and love knowing who uses flights with schedules that I find unconventional. In many cases airlines schedule flights for aircraft optimisation, though they’re also incentivised to fly flights that make sense from a passenger perspective, so they can maximise yield on the flight. A few weeks ago I even wrote about some flight schedules that I find unconventional, ranging from 6 AM longhauls from Sydney to Dubai, to 2 AM arrivals in Hong Kong from Tokyo.
When I wrote that post, I glazed over a flight that I keep revisiting, because of how weird it is. Specifically, I’m thinking of Cathay Pacific’s midnight turn to Guangzhou. The airline operates a 1:15 AM flight from Hong Kong to Guangzhou that lands at 2:20 AM, the plane sits there for a couple of hours, and the return flight leaves Guangzhou at 5 AM to arrive Hong Kong at 6:25 AM.
Cathay Pacific’s unconventionally timed 1:15 AM Guangzhou flight
Cathay Pacific flies a thrice-daily operation between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Two of the flights are timed sensibly – one leaves in the early morning (at 7:50 AM) from Hong Kong, arriving Guangzhou at 9 AM and leaving Guangzhou in the late morning (10:10 AM). The evening flight departs in the later evening (8 PM) from Hong Kong, arriving Guangzhou at 9:10 PM and doing a late-night turn that arrives Hong Kong just before midnight.
However, this post will feature the third frequency, which must have one of the strangest flight schedules I’ve ever seen:
Cathay Pacific 950 Hong Kong – Guangzhou dep. 01:15 arr. 02:20
Cathay Pacific 953 Guangzhou – Hong Kong dep. 05:00 arr. 06:25
I’d consider the inbound Guangzhou-Hong Kong flight to be very early, though it’s the outbound that I find particularly unconventionally timed, given that it both takes off and lands in the wee hours of the morning.
Cathay Pacific has a 1 AM flight between Hong Kong and Shenzhen
The route seems to be consistently operated by an A330 featuring the airline’s regional business class product (who knows – it could eventually be upgraded to being operated by the Aria Studio).
Cathay Pacific’s A330 Regional Business Class Product
Pricing for the route is flat with the more conventionally timed flights, and award space seems to be wide open, costing 7,000 miles in economy or 16,000 miles in business class (which isn’t particularly good value, considering it’s a one-hour flight, let alone at 1 AM in the morning).
16,000 miles for a one-hour flight in regional business class at 1:15 AM? Yes please
I wonder what the use cases of this flight are?
Often there are niche use cases for flights that might not be easy to understand at first glance. For example, Cathay Pacific’s redeye flights between Hong Kong and Singapore frequencies might feel “why does this exist”, though they’re quite useful ahead of morning flights to Europe and the U.S., not to mention that they run like clockwork operationally and are popular with people who are trying to maximise their time at their destination while minimising hotel costs and days off work. Redeye flights to Tokyo and Singapore have been running for decades for this reason, and they’re also good for aircraft optimisation, since the aircraft can operate an outbound evening flight/inbound morning flight without sitting at an outstation for too long.
However, Cathay Pacific is capable of keeping their planes on the ground in Hong Kong overnight. Presumably they need to generate enough passenger revenue from this flight in order to make it more cost-efficient compared to keeping the A330 parked at Hong Kong Airport overnight. But who flies this flight?
- This is way too short to be a usable point-to-point redeye – it leaves Hong Kong too late to be a night flight, and arrives too early to be a usable morning flight
- In terms of connections I can see this working for certain shorthaul destinations, though surely it still leaves too late/arrives too early to be a meaningful connecting flight from Asia or longhaul destinations; most flights even from shorthaul destinations arrive 10:30 PM at the latest
- The return may be a viable route for business travellers from Guangzhou going to Hong Kong, though isn’t 5 AM a bit too early for that?
- There aren’t any 3 AM longhaul departures out of Guangzhou (despite this being quite common for mainland Chinese carriers)
- Maybe there’s a slot at Guangzhou Airport they want to protect, but then again, surely for a total aircraft turnaround of 3h 40m (from when it leaves Hong Kong on the outbound to when it touches down after the inbound), there’s an attractive window in the day for an airport that’s at ~60% utilisation
I’m not sure how many of these seats would be full on one of these flights
Also, unlike other flight schedules that I find unconventional, I can find zero information of this 1 AM flight online, so it’s not like there are any firsthand reports of the load factors on this flight either.
Just from spot checking what tomorrow’s flight looks like, business class has five seats occupied (out of 24), whereas economy is roughly a third full. So the planes aren’t necessarily going out empty, though not necessarily at load factors that would normally justify a viable business case for a flight to be operated. Obviously, I can’t tell from here whether these are mostly connecting passengers from shorthaul destinations within Asia, or from Europe or the U.S.. In either case, given the other flights that run to Guangzhou, I’m sure wondering what made these passengers choose this flight as opposed to the other frequencies (which connect into more sensible arrivals and departures banks from Hong Kong).
Conclusion
There are many flight schedules out there that cater to different travellers, though this one piqued my interest. Cathay Pacific’s 1:15 AM flight from Hong Kong to Guangzhou arrives at 2:20 AM. The use cases of this flight really make me scratch my head – given that award space is aplenty, I’m keen to hop on one of the segments, just to see what it’s really like.
Do you know who’s most likely to use this 1:15 AM flight to Guangzhou? How full is the flight usually?
CARGO. All the regional red eyes are CARGO. This is a tale as old as time. They don’t care if there are no passengers. They fill the belly with cargo.
@ kt74 – But surely they’d then operate a cargo flight, as opposed to a passenger flight (unless there was an aircraft optimisation reason behind it, though in that case I’d be surprised that there aren’t more routes that are operated at similar times)?
nice AI slop
@ Komaena – Not a single word here (on the post, or on the entire site for that matter) was written using AI. Feel free to point out where in the post you think that’s not true.
Wouldn’t it make sense for inbound International
Connections from North America or Europe?
I think he means just slop.
You can just do some research, figure out loads, etc, and then report back. See about history of times of flights to CAN. But instead it seems meaningless drivel. And not written wittily.
@ James – Updated post with loads. Not sure what you mean by the rest of your comment.
It’s obvious just international travellers making connections to/from Guangzhou that aren’t served directly. How do you call yourself a travel blogger?
Cathay Pacific, a Hong Kong based airline does not have non stops flights to Guangzhou (CAN) from US, Canada, UK or the rest of the world. It utilizes HKG as a connecting hub into CAN, the provincial capital. One country, two systems, which has been in practice since 1997. It’s that simple.
They’re probably loading the airplanes in and out for scheduled maintenance.
“ Primary MRO Partner (GAMECO): Cathay Pacific contracts its heavy maintenance, structural repairs, and component overhauls to GAMECO, a major joint venture MRO provider based at CAN. GAMECO is highly capable of servicing Cathay’s fleet, which includes Airbus A330s and A350s.”