Hong Kong Airlines confirm Gatwick as their UK destination

Yesterday, I wrote about Hong Kong Airlines starting up it’s all business class service between Hong Kong and London.

Well it seems Hong Kong Airlines have settled on a route and times.

The planes will be heading to London Gatwick (in line with a few operators who are either new to the airport – Vietnam Airlines, Lufthansa – or have switched from Stansted in the case of Air Asia X), and specificly, the North Terminal at Gatwick.

The service will operate as follows:

HX876   DEPART HKG  23:50     ARRIVE LGW  05:55+1
HX875   DEPART LGW  21:30     ARRIVE HKG  18:05+1

Commencement: 8th March
Equipment: Airbus A330-200 in Business Configuration
Tickets for the service will go on sale in December.

As reported, this will be run with 3 Airbus A330-200’s in a business class service throughout with 34 flat seats and 82 cradle seats.

And again, I’m not sure this will work. Long Haul Business class only flights have been proven to a folly more than once (who can forget MaxJet, SilverJet and EOS with only OpenSkies remaining).

Either Hong Kong Airlines have lined up a bunch of corporates who are already going to us this as a shuttle (and I’d expect a fare war if that is the case), or they have something which the rest of the industry doesn’t know about….