11 Years On, Still Worth Arriving Early?
If there’s one thing Cathay Pacific is really good at, it’s consistency across its products, and this holds true for its lounges as well. If you have been to several of their lounges across the world, you’d realise the immense discipline they put into ensuring a single vibe, no matter where you are in the world.
For this review, I was leaving Taiwan on Cathay and had the chance to spend a couple of hours at its lounge in Taipei. This is a very well reviewed lounge, so let’s take a different angle: how does it hold up with time?
* Only when travelling on Cathay-operated flights
Verdict: Eleven years on, it has aged gracefully. Come hungry, and come early.
Cathay Pacific opened its Taipei Taoyuan lounge in November 2015. Most English-language reviews date from the few years after that, and the fit-out is still the original.
Rather well. I dropped in before CX421 to Hong Kong, and found a lounge that still held up very well. There are a few scuffs at the edges, and the Noodle Bar is still the best reason to show up early.
In this review
Getting to the lounge
Lounges at Taipei Taoyuan Terminal 1 are either incredibly easy or difficult to find: most of them line up in a row, or you might have to wander the terminals to find it. Lucky for Cathay Pacific passengers, they have a pretty good location, pretty close to immigration.
To get there, clear security and immigration in Terminal 1, take a left turn towards the B gates, then once you are past the duty free shops, you will see a flight of stairs on the left. Take that stairs up to Level 4. Once up the stairs, Cathay is the first lounge you will see.
Six lounges share this corridor: two China Airlines lounges, two Plaza Premium lounges, STARLUX’s Galactic Lounge, and Cathay Pacific’s lounge. Cathay’s is the only oneworld option, so if you are taking other oneworld carriers, this should be the lounge you head to.
The entrance is styled in typical timeline Cathay style, a dark grey wall panelling, with a warm cherry-wood reception. Once in, the reception will scan your boarding pass and whisk you into the lounge pronto.
Cathay Pacific’s dozen flights a day typically depart from the B gates. The board inside showed the evening’s Hong Kong flights leaving from B4 to B9, so you should allow yourself at least 10 minutes for the walk. My gate for the day was at B9 and I took about seven minutes to get there.
Access policy
At Taipei, Cathay offers lounge access for business and first class passengers travelling on Cathay and other oneworld carriers, as well as oneworld Sapphire or Emerald members.
For travellers on Cathay Pacific, the airline has a policy of honouring the highest class of travel within the same journey to determine your lounge entitlement, so if you are travelling in economy out of Taipei but connecting to a business or first class flight from Hong Kong, you will still get lounge access.
| Class of travel | Access | Guest POLICY |
|---|---|---|
| First | Yes | CX Diamond – 2 guests oneworld Emerald – 1 guest All others – 1 guest |
| Business | Yes | CX Diamond – 2 guests oneworld Emerald & Sapphire members – 1 guest All others – none |
| Premium Economy & Economy (CX-operated) | CX Silver oneworld Emerald, Sapphire | CX Diamond – 2 guests oneworld Emerald & Sapphire members – 1 guest All others – none |
| Premium Economy & Economy (oneworld-operated) | oneworld Emerald, Sapphire | CX Diamond – 2 guests oneworld Emerald & Sapphire members – 1 guest All others – none |
The only thing worthy of note is that Cathay offers its own Silver members access to their lounges when flying on Cathay Pacific-operated flights. While they do not get guest entitlements, this is still a pretty solid perk of being a Cathay member.
Note that Cathay can limit access for partner-airline passengers at peak times, but this rarely happens given the size of the lounge.
Cathay Pacific has tightened lounge access rules earlier this year by strictly enforcing that a passenger’s eligible Frequent Flyer Program (FFP) number must be printed on their boarding pass to gain entry.
What this means is that if you are flying with Cathay Pacific, you must have your FFP number (with the corresponding status) printed on your boarding pass in order to gain admittance into the lounges.
Once you have completed check-in, lounge agents will no longer be able to manually change your FFP on your boarding pass, and they will also not be able to grant you access just by showing a valid FFP card.
The layout
When it opened, the lounge covered 1,253 square metres with seats for 245, about 100 more than the lounge it replaced. It was also one of the first to get Cathay’s Studioilse “home away from home” design, which has since rolled out across the network.
Laid out across a long rectangular space, the various spaces is arranged neatly across: first you enter into a beautiful food hall (quite a misnomer, more on that later), then to the noodle bar, before you reach the living room where the bar is located.
Eleven years on: how it’s aged
The good news is, the lounge doesn’t look like it has got 11 years on it. The bones are intact. Cherry-wood panelling, limestone floors, wooden grid screens and the green-glazed Noodle Bar tiles all look much as they did in the launch photos. The zoning still works too: a dining room of mustard leather booths, a long central aisle of armchairs, a bar at the far end, and quiet corners off to the side.
A little known fact: this is also where Cathay debuted its Solo Chair, the high-backed armchair with privacy wings, a reading lamp and its own side table, which is a favourite so much so some other airlines have also copied the concept. It has since spread across Cathay’s network, and Taipei’s originals are still here. The linen cushions have gone a little slouchy, but these remain the best seats in the lounge if you want to be left alone.
The wear shows where hands go: scuffed power panels, scratched tabletops, and one of the two self-pour beer taps out of service on my visit. None of it is shabby, but instead, it reads as a well-kept older room rather than a new one.
While I was there mid-afternoon, most of the lounge spaces was quiet despite a couple of flights departing within the hour, except for the Noodle Bar.
The Noodle Bar
The Noodle Bar is practically a signature across all Cathay lounges, and at Taipei, this is still the star. Despite being nested in a relatively small area, the space feels like a posh canteen, with two large communal tables and a dozen booth seating spaces for smaller groups.
In the morning hours the bar serves up breakfast fare, and from 11am, the lounge offers an all day menu. The all-day menu is printed in English, Chinese and Japanese, presumably for the Japan-bound crowd on Cathay’s Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya flights from Taipei.
For the menu this season, there are 12 dishes:
- Signature noodles: wonton noodles, dan dan noodles
- Taiwanese specialities: tomato red-braised beef noodles, braised pork rice, crispy pork chop rice
- Dim sum: shrimp and pork siu mai, king oyster mushroom siu mai, radish and soy-meat bun, black sesame bun
- Everything else: Japanese udon with tofu skin, pumpkin vegetable pasta, rosemary chicken with seasonal vegetables
Five of the twelve are vegetarian, which is very Taiwan.
I didn’t try any of the food this round, but based on how busy the Noodle Bar was, one can only conclude that the food can’t be too shabby.
Food Hall
This hall is a bit of a misnomer: there’s no hot buffet, given all the hot food comes from the Noodle Bar.
What the Food Hall offers is only a cold spread: salads (garden greens, seasonal fruit, quinoa and edamame chicken), bread and nuts. Next to it, a chiller holds brie, smoked cheese, Parma ham, smoked chicken, sandwiches, York cheesecake and panna cotta. Jars of seaweed popcorn with rice crackers, strawberry cookies and pretzels sit by the newspapers. Very Scandinavian, and very sad if you ask me.
The Bar
This is where the bulk of the lounge seating is, complete with different variants of seat choices and configuration.
Right at the end of the lounge was the bar, where you could grab a glass of wine, or order a coffee. On the menu, the Cathay Delight (kiwi, coconut and mint) is still on the list, alongside two newer signatures, Ginger Forest and Orange Dream. Iced bubble tea is billed as the “Taiwan specialty”. For those who need their caffeine fix, the bartender is also a barista who handles coffee.
Drinkers will be happy to know that champagne is now on the list, with the bubbly of the season as A. Robert Cuvée 1722 Brut. There is also Taiwan Beer, which comes in Gold Medal and Classic, with Gold Medal on a self-pour tap.
The one miss: for a lounge this proud of its local food, there’s no Taiwanese whisky. Macallan 12 is the only single malt on the list, and Taiwan’s own Kavalan is nowhere to be seen.
Working in the lounge
If you have work to do, there will be several options for you to get it done.
The Bureau: Cathay’s term for a business centre, this is still here nearer to the entrance, but the dual-OS iMacs it launched with have mostly given way to Windows PCs. I counted only two iMac stations.
The Lounge: this is where the couches and armchairs are located. Where there are side tables, they have a pull-out drawer with universal sockets and USB-A ports but no USB-C, so a Singapore three-pin plug works without an adapter.
Wifi: The lounge wifi runs at a reliable speed. When I conducted a speed test in the afternoon, it clocked 22.6 Mbps down and 17.9 up, which was fine for email and streaming.
Washrooms
First things first: similar to the Singapore lounge, the Cathay Taipei lounge has no showers.
For the washrooms, Cathay stocks Bamford hand wash and lotion sit on travertine counters, though the scent was forgettable.
Final thoughts
The Cathay Taipei lounge is still a very solid lounge despite its age, and is arguably the best lounge among its peers on the same floor.
My top-most wish for this lounge, as with the Singapore lounge, is for showers. While Cathay’s argument may be that short haul passengers do not need showers, a little extra perk such as this will allow passengers on evening flights to Hong Kong a chance to wash up at the lounge first before taking their flight, especially if they had to check out of their hotels earlier in the morning.
All said and done, eleven years is a long time in lounge years, and this one wears it well. The Noodle Bar seems to still do its signatures and local delights properly, the Solo Chairs are still the quietest seats in the lounge, and the wear is largely cosmetic.
