Cathay confirms “newly-designed flagship lounge” for Hong Kong

Cathay Pacific is lifting its lounge game at Hong Kong with plans for what it describes as a “newly designed flagship lounge" at the Oneworld airline’s home port.

In announcing the news today, Cathay Group CEO Ronald Lam also cited the transformation of Cathay’s Beijing Lounge – which will move to a Pier-grade fitout and aesthetic – and the all-new Cathay Pacific lounge at New York’s JFK Terminal 6 as projects spanning “over the next three years."

It’s not yet known if this “newly designed flagship lounge” for Hong Kong will be a makeover of The Wing First and The Wing Business to Cathay’s ‘signature’ look, or a new lounge to emerge in space which opens up once other airlines relocate to Terminal 2 from 2025.

The Wing is one of Cathay's two Hong Kong flagship lounges.

But there’s an intriguing and what we rate as a quite likely possibility: that this “new” lounge will in fact be the return of The Bridge, which Cathay shuttered at the start of the pandemic and later announced would remain permanently closed.

Gone but not forgotten: Cathay’s The Bridge lounge at Hong Kong.

Located at the end of the main spine of the terminal, where escalators come up from the intra-terminal train and T1 splits into two angular ‘piers’, The Bridge was the last of Cathay’s HK lounges to be designed by Foster + Partners – who also shaped The Wing – but embraced a far more relaxed vibe.

The Bridge was Cathay’s first foray into a gentler, more relaxed lounge aesthetic.

While spread across two wings with a 2,560m² footprint, The Bridge was largely supplanted by the The Pier, which put more modern and elegant first class and business class lounges only a short stroll away.

The Bridge marked Cathay's adoption of a more residential lounge aesthetic.

That said, many frequent flyers fondly remember The Bridge's bakery, which offered freshly-made bread and pizzas.

Apart from a short stint as a staff and crew facility during the pandemic, The Bridge has remained abandoned – a quick peek over the railings down that end of the airport shows a thick buildup of dust on the tiled floor and the plastic sheets covering the reception desk and chairs where Cathay staff once warmly welcomed travellers.

Twin Cathay Pacific icons at The Bridge: the Boeing 747 and The Long Bar.

And with no airline or lounge operator taking up the space, and the prospect of even less demand for T1 lounge space once Terminal 2 emerges from its Cinderella-like transformation in 2025, it’s possible Cathay has cut a deal with the HKG airport authority for a vastly-reduced lease which can also help alleviate lounge crowding as demand continues to rebuild to 2019 levels.

In that scenario, we’d expect The Bridge would be extensively renovated and reborn with the same design as The Pier, and could potentially open around in the third quarter of 2025 – although how it will positioned against and differentiated from The Pier Business lounge remains to be seen.

As first reported by Executive Traveller last year, Cathay Pacific’s General Manager for Customer Experience & Design, Vivian Lo, said the “reallocation of airlines” would open up new possibilities for the Cathay loungescape.

“For the long term, and we are quite clear-minded about this, we want to focus our investment on Terminal 1,” Lo said, scuppering speculation that Cathay might move to T2.

“Whether it is an arrivals Lounge or a bigger flagship lounge is something that we’ll study, so we’re doing a lot of customer insights… for the future flagship lounge,” Lo shared at the time.

Executive Traveller understands that an arrivals lounge – which Cathay previously had in the corridor between T1 and T2 – is now off the cards.

Cathay's original HKG arrivals lounge.

Despite its compact size, the lounge was a common pit-stop for travellers alighting from early morning flights – a place where they could have breakfast, tackle some work on their laptops or freshen up with a shower before heading into the city for their first meeting of the day.

Cathay's original HKG arrivals lounge.

This popularity led to the lounge becoming quickly overcrowded to frustrating levels, but Cathay Pacific closed the lounge November 2018 saying “the premises will be returned to the lessor as part of the terminal redevelopment,” adding that “options for an alternative location are limited and not suitable” for the same purpose.

Cathay currently has two flagship lounges in The Wing and The Pier, each at different ends of Terminal 1 and reflecting different eras of lounge design – the former being a sharper commercial treatment by Foster & Partners, the latter a softer residential approach by Studio Ilse.

Executive Traveller has approached Cathay Pacific for comment and clarification on what this “newly designed flagship lounge" will mean for passengers.

Also read: Your complete Oneworld lounge guide for Hong Kong