Flying in underwear, excessive cencorship, cutting pilots, and explaining ping pong balls to mom

Was this an American award or something else? I think some combination of Cathay and others will be my next aspirational redemption.

@ AdamH -- Yep, American one-way award for 67,500 miles. Cathay Pacific first class is awesome!

They may censor the in-flight movie, but they obviously didn't censor ALL of the in-flight entertainment! 🙂

Panasonic can't touch that :).

I would bet the guy who wanted to buy your sweater at the Intercontinental bought the pants off of the guy in boxer briefs.

@MrPickles - LOL!

Many years ago I was returning from Heathrow and due to flight issues ended up on Virgin. One of the movies was South Park ( tells you how long ago this was) where almost every line include f***. They did not censor any of it. If it was an US airline there would not have been any dialogue left.

Next Media!

Lucky, curious on your experience.. In the past 6 months I have flown sfo-hkg return f twice, and both times the experience has been sub par. Ie attendants sitting in the galley the whole time, had to ask for pjs, no refill on champagne or wine without asking. I have heard this is common with us based crew, your experience?

@ Joshua Pickles -- ROFL!

@ Sam -- The US based crews are definitely not as good as the HK based crews on the whole, and have kind of adopted the US service mentality. Right now the daytime flights between SFO and HKG are operated by US based crews, while the nighttime flights are operated by HK based crews. Though that's subject to change, of course.

Ping pong and beer is a great combo. Or if you're Prince Harry, it's ping pong and pool.

@Rich - When South Park came out I went to see it in the theater. In line in front of me, buying tickets for the same movie, was a woman with two young kids who couldn't have been more than 10. Yikes!

I was on the afternooon flight in 3A back in August with SF based crew. It was the best flight ever. 10x better than SQ F.

You have the best stories. I need to start flying first class.

I did a combo oneways F flying CX F JFK-SIN and EY F DEL-JFK. Etihad was as good as Cathay.

@Sam - yes, the SFO based crews on CX aren't that great. Much better service with the HKG crews, who are fantastic in my view.

I can see possibilities for a very entertaining (and useful) book-"Lucky in First Class."

Your mom knows exactly what you were talking about in that post. She was teasing you.

Wearing only boxer-briefs in First is allowed, but only for Calvin Klein models. Everyone else should stick to pajamas.

what about ex-LAX crews? are they usually us or hk based service?

WHOA! I have Global Entry too but I didn't know we can take precedence over the crew! I thought it was cool enough we get to use the same exit line as the crew after picking up our luggage! Very cool!

@ Jason -- I believe they have LAX based crews, though I'm not sure which frequencies are operated by LA crews and which are operated by HK crews.

Ben, that award on AA: Did it cover Bangkok-Hong Kong-SFO? I thought AA did not allow stopovers.

@ Jorge -- It did, as I was in Hong Kong for less than 24 hours.

As I said yesterday, you have the most bizarre experiences. Maybe the guy in 4A was just trying to get the party started. I'm sure he was trying to seduce you just like sweater guy.