Here’s a shortened version of my recap of Cathay vs Northwest to Hong Kong that I posted on my internal company blog.
My latest trip I flew a newly retrofitted Northwest 747 from NYC to Tokyo and an older one from there to Hong Kong. I have flown twice previously on Cathay 747 through Vancouver.
- [stuff about the seats]
- [stuff about the movie selection]
- Cathay has great noise cancelling style headphones, Northwest has crappy throw-away ones. Luckily I had my new Bose noise-cancelling headphones with me. You really appreciate quality headphones on a 20 hour flight.
- I’m pretty sure the flight attendant on Northwest was on crystal meth and she was the only one tending to the whole upstairs cabin. (~22 people)
- Cathay’s cockpit has a little security curtain and you almost never see the pilots come or go. On Northwest the pilots were constantly opening the door and you could see right out the front windshield. Security no-no.
- This may have been an isolated case, but on Northwest the plane landed at a “bus gate” in Tokyo. I had to get out of the airplane, get rained on, get on a crowded bus, drive around the tarmac for a while, then go back through security(!), find the next gate, and no first/business class lounge. [Cathay is better]
- [comparing scheduled departure and arrival times]
And what exactly is Northwest Airlines thinking referring to themselves as NWA. There is only one true NWA and they are from Compton.
