Introduction
This is my review of the Cathay Pacific Business Class seat on their Airbus A350, which I’ve flown on from both LHR to HKG and the reverse.
As always, I decided to take a window seat, which has two windows looking into the outer world.
The Layout
Cathay’s A350’s do not have First Class, and rather strangely their first row in Business Class starts at 11 for the centre seats, and 12 for the window seats.
The aircraft is configured in 1-2-1 format, allowing all seats aisle access – no jumping over people to go to the toilet!
Privacy
As far as I am aware, none of Cathay’s Business Class has ‘doors’, unlike Qatar’s QSuite or BA’s Club Suite.
Nevertheless, the orientation of the seats are still make the seat very private – unlike American’s Flagship!
The Seat
The seat itself is very comfy, and easily configurable into a bed.
The controls for the seat are on the left hand side, along with a reading light and remote control for the IFE (In Flight Entertainment).
There is no massage feature, nor is there any memory of your seat position – it’s everso slightly basic.
One thing that I did really like, which is unusual to many other aircraft, is the fixed foot rest down the side of the seat. I found this a nice place to put my feet up, whilst we were not allowed to use the electronic seat controls.
Table
The table is good in size, and perfect for a laptop, and for doing work. For bathroom breaks, the table moves inwards around 45 degrees, so you can get out – however you will need to move anything on the table off!
Storage
I found the storage around the seat to be quite good.
Firstly, there is a ‘side console’, which is great for putting things such as laptops, etc.
On the floor, there is a large storage compartment for things such as shoes.
Next to the ‘side console’ there is a cupboard, complete with mirror and pocket for items such as cards, etc. This cupboard also stored the headphones and has the power hidden in it!
Generally, I found the storage to be very good!
Charging/Power
The seat features a single USB socket, and a multi-socket – offering UK/US/Euro sockets. I found the location of this slightly annoying – and also quite hard to intuitively find. Officially, the door has to be open when charging and/or running cables from the door, which made things a bit annoying – but I then noticed there was a sufficient gap under the door to run the cables without them getting squashed!
Conclusion
This is a great way to travel ‘ultra long haul’!
There is a large amount of space for working/sleeping/eating/relaxing, there is plenty of storage and there is plenty of space.
My only criticisms are (a) that the seat was looking pretty tired and seemingly fixed made with silicone, that looked really bad; and (b) lack of USB sockets.
