Airplane on Ground: Troubled Cathay Pacific Flight – What Happened?

I follow the Cathay Pacific pilots and cabin crew for flight briefing before boarding the Boeing 777-300/ER to Paris. However, we encountered trouble before takeoff…What happened?

I boarded the flight early to film how Cathay’s crew prepared for departure. While the pilots were checking, they discovered a mechanical fault on the B777. Engineers were called in for troubleshooting while all the passengers waited. Later, it was determined that the best solution was to change to another aircraft.

Luckily, Cathay found another 4 class B777-300/ER so all the catering, baggage, and cargo were moved to the new plane. All passengers and crew had to deplane and our departure was delayed by 2 hours. The efficiency of the airline operations was noted during the recovery process and we managed to depart without further issues or delays.

After takeoff, cabin crew started their busy duty on the 13-hour-long flight. They explained their workloads on the overnight intercontinental flight to me. Go behind the scenes to discover the inflight operation.

45 Comments

  1. I'm from HK originally and quite proud to see Cathay's operation as it shows integrity, discipline and efficiency.
    With some hard work and luck, In less than 2 hours. We’re off to Paris on another plane. Not every airline can do!

  2. Great to see how CX handled the situation. As a Gold member, totally appreciate the hard work from the crew and pilots. Keep up the great work!!!

  3. I've been on several flights where there were out of the ordinary incidents that delayed the flight. The flight crews' attitude and keeping us informed were what impressed me on a couple of the flights as I thought they honestly felt bad for us.

  4. Impressive performance of CX crew in addressing the technical issue with the aircraft! Nice to see cabin crew with diverse nationalities (headed by a Filipino ISM – great job) who handled the passengers with great service! Awesome job Sam in documenting this flight! Kudos!

  5. Man i can’t be more proud of those Filipina crew. They are nice and welcoming. I wish some of the PAL cabin crews are like that😅

  6. My takeaway from the video is Cathy Pacific is very professional! They handled the plane change way better than most airline teams would have. Of course such a hiccup happening at the airline hub no doubt was a big part of the problem solution.

  7. Seriously impressive turnaround from Cathay. So hard to deal with such things and also to do this understaffed and being filmed. Really looking forward to Cathay competing at the very top, very soon.

  8. The ISM (Purser) is very kind and they all act a bit let stressful and more human compared to the documentation of Qatar Airways. The briefing held there was like hell haha

  9. Thank you Sam. One of your best reports for me, as you connected us to the real deal of a succesful flight, that is the persons involved. Cheers!

  10. Just got stuck for 5 hours in Orlando with an 15 year old Emirates B77W. The ground staff crew was very helpful, and after finally boarding the plane and flying to Dubai, can say that was one peaceful flight where everyone was exhausted and slept for most of the flight. IRROPS happen, and it is ground staff and crew that helps the time pass by.

  11. CX must be desperate. A declining market. Narrow body aircraft on routes when wide body aircraft were the norm. The demise of HKG as a truly global gateway is in full swing. Not forgetting that they are now having to recruit relatively inexperienced flight deck crew.

  12. It is almost never what goes wrong that is the problem. It is how you recover from difficulty that truly matters.

  13. HELLO SAM THIS MAY SOND A LITEL WIERD BUT I WANT TO WORK AS A FLIGHT ATENDENT BUT I DONT KNOW WHAT AIRLINE I SHOUD WORK FOR I LIVE IN ISRAEL AND I DONT WANT TO WORK IN A ISRAEL AIRLINE SO CAN YOU HELP ME I DONT WANT TO BE TOO FAR FROM MY FAMILY SO CAN YOU HELP PL TY FOR LISTENING

  14. I am a crew member of LH and we are also having the problem with less crew members and more loadwork. The problem is that its not a lack of crewmembers – its a saving thing from the management 😢

  15. The crew got there early and performed pre-flight, got the aircraft ready for boarding, boarded, waited, and then had to disembark all passengers and then do the pre-flight, get new aircraft ready for boarding, reboard all passengers, and only when the doors close do they start getting paid! That's from 21 : 45 until 01 : 58 (04h13) not being paid but put in a responsible and stressful situation!

  16. Ironically I was just in Hong Kong for the last week and I flew into Hong Kong lat week and out of Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific (to Shanghai) today.

  17. After coming back from near death experience, Cathay maintained some old glory but also showed issues to be addressed. I wish it the best.

  18. Stuff happens. How they deal with it is what matters. Makes for a much more interesting video anyway 😁

  19. i work as crew myself and i wud b so annoyed if someone just stuck a camera to my face while i was trying to work

  20. I rather change planes than leave with a problem.❤❤ safety first❤❤❤ the cabin crew was amazing with flexibility and how quickly they adjust to the sudden change… well done. I want this kind of pilots and cabin crew for my flights 😊😊😊

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