This week Cathay Pacific announced that they are increasing services between San Francisco and Hong Kong to three flights daily. One of the daily flight will be served by the airline’s newest aircraft Airbus A350-900! This makes San Francisco the 2nd North America destination besides Vancouver that will be served by Cathay’s A350. The new service will start on October 29, 2017.
Flight schedule for Cathay Pacific A350Â between SFO and HKG
The new daily flight CX893 will depart San Francisco at 12:55 am, arriving in Hong Kong the following day at 8:05 am. The early morning arrival will allow passengers to connect with Cathay Pacific flights to Greater China and southeast Asia countries without a long layover or overnight stay in Hong Kong. The return flight, CX892 will depart Hong Kong
- at 5:55 pm (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday), arriving in San Francisco at 1:55 pm the same day.
- at 6:45 pm (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday), arriving in San Francisco at 2:45 pm same day.
The other two daily flights from San Francisco, CX879 and CX873, will continue to be operated by Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. At the same time, flights to Los Angeles will be reduced from 28 to 21 per week. These changes come on top of previously announced additional services to Vancouver and Boston that will start later this month.
Cathay A350-900, photo supplied by Cathay Pacific
Cathay’s A350 and award availability on the new SFO flight
Cathay Pacific’s Airbus A350-900 aircrafts feature quiet and extra-wide cabins, and windows with panoramic views. They are the first in Cathay’s fleet to offer Wi-Fi service. Each A350 has a total of 280 seats configured in three classes: 214 economy seats, 28 premium economy and 38 business. There is no first class cabin. You can learn more about Cathay’s Airbus A350 here and the routes served by Airbus A350 across all airlines here.
You can check Cathay Pacific awards on British Airway’s website. And award availability on the new SFO flight is pretty good in general, even during December near the busy holiday travel season. On most days, it has 5 seats in business class, 2 in premium economy, and wide open in economy. My coworker was able to book her family of four in business class on the new A350 flight for this coming Christmas holiday for her desired dates! So act fast if you are interested in flying Cathay to Asia this December!
Best way to book award flights on Cathay Pacific is using either AAdvantage miles or Alaska Airlines miles. You have to call American or Alaska directly to book the flights as they cannot be booked online. The number of miles required for each way are:
- American AAdvantage – 35,000 economy, 70,000 business and 110,000 first class. (no redemption for premium economy).
- Alaska MileagePlan – 30,000 economy, 35,000 premium economy, 50,000 business and 70,000 first class.
I have flown Cathay’s 777-300ER between San Francisco and Hong Kong a few times in first class and loved the experience. I have not yet flown on the Airbus A350 on any airline, so it would be interesting to see if I can make Cathay’s new flight work for my trip to Asia next year.
Will you be trying out Cathay’s new A350 service between San Francisco and Hong Kong?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
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