a large white airplane with red and yellow stripes on the side

Feature image via Benson Kua via Flickr

The Many Business Class Products of Hong Kong Airlines

Steven Ganeles·August 18, 2018

Like many other people earlier this week, I was able to take advantage of the great fare sale from LAX/SFO to Asia for as little as $540 round trip. The deal is now gone and Hong Kong Airlines claims that the sale was unintentional but they also said they will honor every ticket that completed the ticketing process.

So about that 600 USD business class transpacific fare 😳….we did it, we will honour it, and perhaps a few people will get to travel on our news business class product being introduced in September to LA. What’s not to like?✈️

— Hong Kong Airlines (@hkairlines) August 18, 2018

Considering that I now have a flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Shanghai (PVG) coming up in January, I wanted to know more about the Hong Kong Airlines on board product. I learned that they have one of the most inconsistent fleets of business class products, including one product that I didn’t know any airline besides Hawaiian Airlines flew. For an airline with just 41 planes (13 of which don’t offer business class) they have 6 different on board products. That is 4 too many products than they should have. Take a look at all the different options below.

1. Staggered A330(33V/333)/A350

a row of red seats in an airplane a row of seats in an airplane

Pitch	Width	Number of Seats	Recline
42-45″	20-20.5″	18-33	180°

2. A330-300 Singapore Angled Flat (33S)

a row of seats on an airplane — Image Courtesy of Alvin Tse – Young Travelers of Hong Kong

a plane with rows of seats and monitors — Image Courtesy of Alvin Tse – Young Travelers of Hong Kong

a woman standing in a row of seats — Image Courtesy of Alvin Tse – Young Travelers of Hong Kong

Check out Alvin’s review of the product here.

Pitch	Width	Number of Seats	Recline
42-45″	20-20.5″	18-33	172°

3. Regional A330-200 (332)

a close-up of a plane

Pitch	Width	Number of Seats	Recline
62″	20.5″	24	151°

4. Regional A320 Recliner (32H)

a row of red and purple seats in an airplane — Photo via Business Traveler

Pitch	Width	Number of Seats	Recline
45″	22″	8	115-120°

5. Optimares Maxima A330-200 (33T)

This is the most interesting product Hong Kong Airlines is flying. It is the same product used aboard Hawaiian Airlines. It was designed to allow window passengers direct aisle access even when their neighbor is reclined. As far as I know Hong Kong Airlines is the only other airline flying with this seat design and they are the only ones flying it with a built-in in flight entertainment monitor as Hawaiian uses a tablet based system. Hong Kong Airlines only has 2 planes like this (B-LHA, B-LHB).

a screen on a stand — Images Courtesy of ychxk – Triplust.Asia

Pitch	Width	Number of Seats	Recline
71″	20.5″	18	180°

6. A350 Reverse Herringbone

This product has yet to be release but we know it is coming. Ben from One Mile at a Time reported about a year ago that Hong Kong Airlines planned to introduce the B/E Aerospace Reverse Herringbone Seats onboard the A350. According to the tweet above from Hong Kong Airlines, we should start seeing these seats as of September. We anticipate that they should look similar to the image below of Qatar Airlines A350

a seat in a plane