Hello from Hong Kong!
Some quick notes after my extra long trip from ORD to HKG
Upon entering the Swiss Lounge at ORD, I was told that my wife and I were the only passengers booked in First Class for our flight. I was quite excited for this, having a 6 seat cabin to ourselves would be great. There were still 2 Flight Attendants serving us. I saw in a window seat for take off, then moved to my assigned seat, 2D for the flight. My wife and I dined together in seat 2A. Having the whole cabin to ourselves was quite an experience.
Hong Kong, we have a problem
After a movie maybe 7 hours into the flight, I switched to the inflight map when I noticed a problem…
An unexpected and unplanned left turn…
Somewhere over the arctic, we turned hard left, eventually landing in Anchorage. There was a medical emergency on board, that required us to divert. I saw the passenger walk off the plane, so it didn’t seem that serious, but I’m certainly no physician.
A literal fuel dump
The diversion caused the crew to go illegal. They had mentioned that if we couldn’t get out of Anchorage in time, we would likely go to Vancouver, where there is at least a Cathay crew base. The crew didn’t have enough time to get all the way to Hong Kong, so we made another stop at Tokyo Haneda. Another crew got on board there, and we finally continued to HKG.
There wasn’t a lot of information passed down to the passengers, but the flight attendants in FC were happy to share the information they had with us. I also had conversations with the Canadian flight crew who took the 4 remaining seats in FC for the HND-HKG leg. As I learned, there is little buffer room for a 15 hour flight.
I’ll have more details and photos later, but now I’m finally here in Hong Kong and am ready to stretch my legs a bit! Thank goodness we were in First Class for what ended up being 24 hours on the plane.
