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
- 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.
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?
