Last weekend I traveled to Asia on a brief “mileage jog”.  The fare was hard to beat ($450!) and one of my systemwide upgrades cleared at booking for my flight back, so I was pretty excited about the trip.  However, the fare was a bit unique in that the outbound leg flew into Hong Kong and the return left from Beijing, leaving me responsible for getting myself to Beijing.

Enter Dragonair

a close up of a glass of champagne

Dragonair

Dragonair (soon to be rebranded as Cathay Dragon) is the regional subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, one of my favorite airlines.  Although many people think of Dragonair as a low-cost carrier subsidiary (similar to Scoot’s relationship with Singapore Airlines) they are actually a full-service airline, just not to the standard of Cathay Pacific.  I’ve flown Dragonair before in Business class on an A330 and found it to be a perfectly pleasant flight.

I had always been under the impression that Dragonair offered economy, premium economy, and business.  Much to my surprise, when I was searching for award flights from Hong Kong to Beijing I found a Dragonair flight offering First Class!  I was confused for a bit but after a bit of Googling I found that Dragonair has in fact been offering First Class since early 2014.  I couldn’t not book it, so here we go!

The Seat

Dragonair’s First Class seat is the exact same seat as Cathay Pacific’s newest Business Class seat.  You’ll also find these highly acclaimed seats on American’s 777-300ERs in Business Class.  Dragonair also shares regional business class and economy seats with Cathay Pacific, so this isn’t unexpected.  It is the first case that I’ve found of an airline calling a Business Class seat First Class, but it is a subsidiary and not a mainline operator so it’s perfectly fine for a 3 hour flight.

a seat in an airplane

Dragonair First Class seat

a seat in an airplane

Dragonair First Class seat

a window in an airplane

Dragonair First Class seat

a close up of a device

Seat controls

The cabin decor looks exactly the same as a Cathay Pacific First Class cabin, so it felt oddly familiar yet different.

The Service

I was served an amuse bouche and requested some champagne during the boarding process.

a glass on a table in an airplane

Amuse bouche and waiting champagne glass

As we took off towards China my champagne glass was delightfully refilled and they brought by some macadamia nuts as well.

a close up of a glass of wine

Champagne glass!

a bowl of peanuts

Macadamia nuts

Keeping in the spirit of “just like Cathay Pacific but not quite” they had a caviar service!  But there wasn’t as much caviar in the tin as there would’ve been on a Cathay flight.

After the caviar there was a prawn salad that was absolutely wonderful.  Obviously I had to break out the macro lens for some close-up shots.

a close up of a piece of food

Prawn salad

There was one part of the flight that was just as good as Cathay: the buttery garlic bread!

a close up of food

Mmmmm….bread

The main entree was a beef filet with a side of prawn and green beans.

The dessert was a molten chocolate cake.  Now, I don’t know much about anything but I know molten chocolate cake.  Unfortunately this cake missed the mark a bit: there was no “molten”.  It was perfectly good chocolate cake, but I had high hopes after seeing it on the menu.  Oh well.

a close up of a dessert

Looks great, but…

a close up of a chocolate cake with strawberry sauce

No molten, womp womp

After the meal service, they brought by some warm towels for everyone.

a white towel on a cell phone

Warm towel

I then set the seat back to get some sleep.  Shortly before we started our descent I requested some coffee, which they brought promptly with some chocolates.

a cup of coffee being poured into a white cup

Me “ruining the coffee” by adding milk

a chocolate bar in a bowl

Mmmmm…chocolates

Final thoughts

I enjoyed my flight in Dragonair’s First Class.  The service wasn’t quite as good as Cathay Pacific First, but I didn’t expect it to be.  The service, seat, and everything else were on par with Cathay Pacific longhaul Business Class, it’s probably the best comparison.  The flight attendants were dutiful, friendly, and prompt and the in-flight entertainment had an extensive collection (it’s just a rebranded version of Cathay Pacific’s StudioCX system).

In business class this would’ve cost me 22,500 AAdvantage miles, First Class cost 32,500 miles.  Was it worth the 10,000 mile premium?  Probably not for a three hour flight, but I just had to review it for you!

 

What did you think of the Dragonair First Class review?  Have you flown it?  What did you think?

 

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