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Hong Kong airlines is following up its recent announcement of flights between Hong Kong and Los Angeles (due to start in December) by scheduling service to San Francisco in 2018.
The Hong Kong based airline launched its first route to North America earlier this year when it started flying to Vancouver at the end of June with its Airbus A350 aircraft. Now, with LA service due to start 18 December the airline has published its planned schedule for San Francisco.
Hong Kong Airlines arriving in Vancouver – Image Hong Kong Airlines
From 25 March 2018 Hong Kong Airlines will operate a 4x/week service between Hong Kong and San Francisco and this will rise to a daily service from 18 August 2018.
The schedule is as follows:
HX060 HKG 12:20 – 10:15 SFO (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sun)
HX061 SFO 12:00 – 17:25+1 day HKG (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sun)
The A350s that the airline currently operates are aircraft it took over from another airline (Azul) and the seat configuration looks like this:
Business Class
Economy Class
In all likelihood however, the A350s that will operate the San Francisco route will be ones ordered directly from the manufacturer and will therefore offer a reverse herringbone configuration in Business Class (like Cathay Pacific) rather than the staggered layout we see now.
It’s worth bearing in mind that all is not plain sailing with Hong Kong airlines.
There have been reports that discounted Business Class fares book into a fare code that doesn’t offer any redeemable miles or miles/points towards airline status.
Flights on Hong Kong airlines can be credited to Hainan Airlines or, in some cases, to Virgin Australia…but I haven’t spotted any other frequent flyer partners.
In addition to this the Hong Kong Airlines website appears more than a little buggy.
While the website proudly advertises the airlines new LA route….
….I either get a blank screen or a never-ending “searching” symbol when I try to find fares.
I did at one point get to a results page but that just showed no flights available whatsoever!
Flights to/from San francisco haven’t been loaded in to the reservations system at the time of writing.
Bottom Line
It’s nice to have more options between the US and Asia and, from what I’ve head, the new Hong Kong Airlines Business Class should be pretty good…..but my experience of the airline’s website has put me off somewhat.
I find it hard to have much respect for an airline which can’t even maintain its website to a point where passengers can reliably find fares (did I mention the site crashed when I searched for fares out of Vancouver?)
Add this to the fact that Hong Kong Airlines doesn’t appear to have any obvious ties to US frequent flyer programs and my interest wanes a little more.
