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Cathay Pacific will use a 777-300ER like this one for its new Boston-Hong Kong non-stops. (Image: Cathay Pacific)
Cathay Pacific now has six U.S. gateways following the launch this week of new Boston-Hong Kong non-stop service with a Boeing 777-300ER.
The flight will operate four days a week — westbound on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday; and eastbound on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Just how long does that flight take? According to the Cathay Pacific website, flights from Boston to Hong Kong take a whopping 15 hours and 50 minutes. Flying back takes 15 hours, 30 minutes. Cathay’s New York JFK flights are slightly shorter at 15 hours 45 mins according to its website. A spokesperson said that while there is some internal debate about which flight is longer, it’s safe to say the these two flights are the two longest ones in the Cathay Pacific network.)
TravelSkills editor Chris McGinnis leaning back in Cathay’s premium economy seat on a new 777 (Photo: David McIntyre)
Cathay’s 777-300ER will include the airline’s new Premium Economy seating option as well as first, business, and regular economy. Passengers on the BOS-HKG flights will be able to connect to 23 cities in mainland China as well as key business centers in southeast Asia like Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi.
Cathay said that until its service started this week, Boston was the largest U.S.-Hong Kong air travel market with no non-stop service, amounting to 53,000 passengers in 2013.
The airline’s other U.S. gateways are Chicago, New York JFK, Newark, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It also flies to Toronto and Vancouver. Economy fares on the new Boston route start at $1,648 roundtrip this month. Business class costs around $5,000 roundtrip.
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The EWR-SIN route was taken away due to so many points redemption on that route and the company had lost a lot of money.
I wonder if the Boston – Hong Kong flights pass over the North Pole. I read somewhere that there used to be a nonstop flight from Newark to Singapore and that it didn’t fly the most direct route because that would have taken them over large parts of the Arctic Ocean that were too far away from emergency-landing airports. Eeek. I have a terrible fear of flying over water… I break out into a sweat when I’m on a flight that crosses the Mississippi.
Actually, I just checked on the Great Circle Mapper site (gcmap.com), and a direct flight from Boston to Hong Kong would fly just to the west of Greenland as it crosses the Arctic Ocean and would then continue south over Russia. It would fly far to the east of Alaska and far to the west of Japan. Whoever decided that planets should be spheres really made flight navigation a mess.