Following our extra long First Class flight from O’Hare to Hong Kong, we opted to head to The Arrival lounge to get cleaned up. The fact that the MTR was not yet running also influenced this decision. That and 24 hours on the plane.
Hong Kong International Airport
The Arrival
The club took a bit of searching to find, but that may have been my mind clouded by jet lag. Apparently I’m not the only one who found the lounge difficult to find. There is an excellent series of photos to help people find the lounge on Flyertalk here. It is located below the Airport Express Station, in the connector between Terminals 1 and 2. This lounge is accessible by Cathay Pacific First and Business Class passengers, Gold tier and higher in the Marco Polo program, and One World Emerald members. There is another lounge available across the hall in the Plaza Premium lounge. Access to the PP lounge is available for purchase.
The Arrival opens at 5am, and as I discovered, not a minute before.
The first stop in our visit was the showers.
There were soap and shampoo dispensers in the actual shower stalls. The shower rooms had white marble on the walls and floor, and the shower wall was made with white stones. After showers, we relaxed a bit, and I spent a little time catching up on emails.
View of The Arrival lounge
The actual lounge is pretty small, with some seating areas, iMac terminals, and a small dining area in the rear. The shower rooms are behind the glass wall on the right. Food options were a fine, with a pretty standard continental offering of breads, yogurt, fruit, and some juices.
The Pier
After our short stopover and our stay at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, we were back at HKG airport for our flight to Bali. Cathay Pacific flights to/from Bali only offer Business Class and Economy Class service, even though the aircraft used are their 3-class 747s. When we checked in for our flights, we were given an invitation to business class lounges. We visited The Pier, which was nearest our departure gate. While there I asked if we could be seated in the first class cabin for our flight. This took quite a while, but eventually, I was given new boarding passes with seats in the first class cabin.
My impression of The Pier Business Class lounge was that it was decent, but nothing special. On the return trip, I visited the first class side of the lounge, which wasn’t much better.
The lounge was not particularly busy mid-morning on a Saturday
Some Dim sum on the buffet
Food options in the lounge were varied, but nothing outstanding. We were there in the morning, so the Chinese choices included Dim Sum, and some congee. Western options included cereal and various pastries and breads. There was a wide variety of reading materials available including magazines and local newspapers from all over the world.
One nice thing about the location of the lounge is the viewing opportunities. HKG has a great variety of widebody planes.
Tarmac view from The Pier
After our visit to the Pier, we headed to the gate for our 747 flight in Cathay Pacific Business Class to Bali.
