We landed pretty close to on-time from my GBA flight from Hong Kong (see the previous video) and I had to decide to I want to “land” or just try to transfer?
I’ve been stuck in the outgoing passport control line for more than an hour before at Bangkok so I decided to transfer. On my walk to the transfer point, I checked-in and generated the boarding pass. Then I walked over and after some unnecessarily long inspection of my mobile boarding card, she let me though. Bag screened and I was back in departures.
Ethiopian uses a gate which is at the new midfield concourse and the incoming flight was on-time. I used the time to do a bit walking about, had lunch then waited and waited by the gate. It looked like 50-60 of us were boarding this flight to HKG.
I was called to the counter and my passport checked before she printed me a paper boarding pass. About 90 minutes late, boarding started.
Prior to the flight, Ethiopian sent me a note, saying I could bid for business class or to have the whole row open in economy for my flight. I chose the latter and I “won” with a bid of $99.
On board, the seat was fine, and I indeed had the whole to myself. I notice the child in front of me was sitting in a lap, but way bigger than a two year old. I didn’t think much of it. If the flight crew doesn’t care, why should I?
The meal service was quick, as the flight was pretty empty. I chose the beef, and while it didn’t look appealing it tasted ok. Then I sprawled out in my three seats and browsed the entertainment options. Not to EK or CX standards but certainly not the worst I’ve seen either.
As the flight time between BKK and HKG is usually only two hours we were soon landing. Upon landing, a lot of people stood up and started going through the bins for their stuff. It took over a minute for staff to respond and and it didn’t really seem like they cared all that much.
We parked at Gate 71, which is closest to the arrivals runway, and deboarding began.
I’ll say this, given their network; Ethiopian has an opportunity to be a leader in a smaller scale as a global transit hub, but there’s a lot of work to do. I would rate this experience as average, but exotic. I would likely not have flown Ethiopian if not to try it because it is so different to the standard airlines available to us in HK!