Cathay Pacific Airways

CX's new economy class seats are a quantum leap from the last generation of fixed shells. The seats are thin enough to give good knee/leg room without compromising lumbar support. At least as comfy as the SQ econ seats. Seat feels solid and well built. New IFE uses a touchscreen - personally found it a bit slow rather temperamental. Have to wonder how these will hold up after several months of abuse by kids etc. Small recess under the IFE screen for storing phones cameras wallets glasses etc a nice touch. Thumbs up to CX for carving slits into this recess so you can easily see if you've left any valuables as you deplane.

The seats on both these flights from Perth to London were the most uncomfortable we have ever travelled in.

On the upright position you get decent support even though the cushion is a bit thin and hard compared to standard airlines seats. In the recline position however you get pretty much no back support as you end up sliding down (below the head rest) to get into any type of position conducive to sleep. For flights under 5 hours I would choose these seats over standard reclining seats. You have good view of the screen there's a power outlet and you can enjoy the inflight entertainment. Where Cathay made the mistake is for long haul flights where people are inclined to sleep for some portion of the flight. For sleep these are absolutely the worst seats. I think they made a mistake in installing them on their trans-continental flights. In an ironic note if you don't want to sleep on your flight these seats are the best. If you want to sleep choose a different airline. If you want to stay awake the whole time (which for flights arriving at night in either direction helps with the jetlag) I would choose Cathay.

These seats would have to be worst ever. The physical seat shell did not recline however the seating within the shell slid to make believe you "reclined". After being loaded on the plane and being told that we had to wait for 10 mins for connecting passengers to join our flight after sitting for this period the seats then became extremely uncomfortable. Butt and back padding is very slim and had to travel our whole return trip from Rome via Hong Kong to Sydney with the pillow and blanket at my lower back. this made the seat just bearable however frequent moving and getting up standing for multiple periods of time made the trip just manageable. The only benefit of this type of chair is that you don't have the chair in front of you recline in your face - but this would have been great if the padding on the chair was softer.

BNE to HKG and onto PVG. Awful seats. Have one more flight next week from PVG to BKK and thats it. No more Cathay Pacific for me. The shell seats are uncomfortable for a 183 cm tall person. Okay for 2 hours maximum but from BNE to HKG they were torture.

The seats are ok for short flights but very hard on long flights. There is no 'recline' available it just slides forward and pretends to recline. Leg room is marginally better than other economy seats since the back of the seat in front doesn't recline which is the only plus for this type of seat. Bring something to sit on as the seats get very hard after the first 6 hours!

Very bad design not enough upholstery behind your back or under your bottom. Impossible to sleep because the seat didn't recline. I was cold the seat was hard I couldn't sleep.

The new seat design is really horrible. The seat no longer reclines and it becomes very uncomfortable for a long haul flight. I couldn't sleep well.

I flown many airlines and this was the first that caused my ankles to swell. If you suffer from DVT stay away and if you are over 5 foot you should also stay away. I will never travel with them again - awful.

Seats are agonisingly painful after a few hours. There is a critical fault which means that there is not enough padding - a metal bar across the bottom of the seat hurts the bottom of your spine - the worst economy seat in the air.