vegas

I am using FF miles to get to Manila from Las Vegas. Any suggestions on what the NICEST seats are and the best service. I find there is nothing like a hands on experience if anyone has had one. I figure it is a ton of miles to use for a ticket, may as well feel spoiled!!

AAFrequentFlyer

All 3 are great. You can't go wrong with any one of the mentioned airlines.

JL - if you will be flying out of LAX or SFO then make sure the planes have the new, fabulous Skysuites or whatever they are called. JL rolled these out about a year ago on flights from/to NY (flights #1/2), followed by flights from/to ORD (flights #8/9) and the west coast was next. I believe it's a done deal, but if you looking for the ultimate seat, then confirm that they are available on your flight.

Another fact to consider - F Lounges
CX and SQ - 2 of the best lounges in the world. I'm talking about the lounges in their home port, not their satelite lounges. JL's Sakura lounge is wonderful but a notch or 2 below the other 2.

If you compare the new JL seats with CX and SQ, then the flight itself will be fabulous on any one of the 3. Of course, just like in the real world, an occasional hiccup happens, so don't assume that it will be perfect, but it will come to as perfect as humanly possible with these 3 airlines.

Have a wonderful trip!

mrwunrfl

I flew JAL 005/006 first class between JFK and NRT last spring. It was a 747 equipped with the Skysleeper Solo seats. Had the Japanese meal both ways and it was excellent. Other snacks and treats were great. The service was excellent on the outbound flight and very good on return (full fc cabin). The Solo seat was good for privacy and has a small table area and other features that were useful. The AVOD was very good and I recommend watching the Stewardess Cop movie, if available (they are in a series and feature JAL flights, very funny even if it is in Japanese).

The actual flat bed was ok. I am 6'3" and the headrest on the seat back was too low so that it was below the top of my shoulders. That was annoying. The seat/bed is in a shell/coccoon unit. You know how on a regular seat you can lean, or extend your arm, over the side edge of the seat to use up the little extra room between a window seat and the cabin wall? There is no extra sideways room because of the shell. The seatbed is leather, but I prefer the leather on a jetBlue coach seat. Better yet would be cloth. The cabin temp was fairly high, and they give you a nice warm comforter, so I ended up too warm and perspiring against that leather seat. They give you a thin quilted pad to lay over the leather to sleep on, but the only way to fasten it down was a hood over the headrest. That meant that the pad slid off of the seat and was basically useless. I did get a good 4/5 hours of sleep on the outbound flight.

The JAL First Class lounges are very convenient at both JFK and NRT. Small but nice with some good food.

I took ANA 001 from IAD to NRT on Christmas Day. It is standard 2x2x2 seating, not the solo coccoon kind of seating. I think I preferred it to the JAL Solo seat because it wasn't leather and wasn't a coccoon so I had someplace to put my arms.

That was my experience in JAL first class and YMMV. I think you will enjoy it if you fly JAL: I am not really knocking it hard (don't intend to, anyway). Am just saying that the coccoon seat was not quite as good as it looked to me.

On the same FF award ticket, I flew JAL business class between NRT and DPS. That was very good, better (IMO) than Asiana and Thai business class that I flew on Friday and Saturday.

rkkwan

No first-hand experience from me, but a few things you may think about if you choose CX.

1. LAX has one of the worst international terminal in the world. People really hate it. It has nothing to do with CX's service, but unfortuantely, they do use the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

2. In the winter, CX's LAX-HKG often has to make a fuel-stop in Taipei. Not a big issue if you're flying in F, as that only means more "bed-time" for FF miles.

Therefore, it may sound better to use the SFO-HKG service rather than LAX, but I think at least one of the two SFO flights use the less-spacious 340, and not the 747. Check the equipment type.

3. CX has a couple of the nicest airport lounges in the world at HKG.

nks267

We just flew on SIngapore Airlines from Singapore to SFO in Business Class (Raffles) and the service, food, seats were amazing. The seats and configuration in first class looked awesome..with full leather seats that apparantly recline. Having flown Cathay (first class) and Singapore Business/Raffles class...I would choose Singapore over Cathay..havent flown JAL so cant say for sure!

Kate_W

Research this question on Flyertalk.com (read the trip reports posted by frequent business travellers in the discussion forums for Cathay, Singapore Airlines and JAL).