Flight Report
UO 260 Hong Kong - Beijing Daxing
18 March 2024

Hong Kong Express launched a new flight to Beijing in March 2024. However, it was not serving the traditional Capital airport, but the new Daxing airport south of the city. With super specials on offer, I couldn't resist to try both a new route and a new airport for a fairly bargain basement price of HKD $1200 with hand baggage only.

Being spring, Beijing is susceptible to nasty dust storms, but the weather forecast called for sunshine for my entire 4-day stay.

With such a cheap fare, I was more than happy to splurge an extra $50 for a guaranteed window seat at the front of the plane during online check-in. Strangely, the airline didn't send me an email to remind check-in online a day earlier, but there were plenty of window seats upfront for me to choose from.

However, I couldn't download the boarding pass for some reason, so I would try my luck at the airport kiosk the next morning.

Arriving at 9:30am for my 11:05am flight, I went straight to the kiosk to print my boarding pass. While there are signs showing which destinations cannot be done this way, Beijing is not one of them, but the machine wouldn't recognize my China permit, the card Hong Kongers carry to fly, train, or walk into the mainland. We don't need to carry a passport to fly to Beijing. Flagging a staff down, she referred me to the long manual line as the machine won't work for this route. Sucks.

The manual line for online check-in had snaked outside the holding pen by now, although I see staff come out every now and then calling for specific flights whose check-in deadlines are imminent. It moved steadily but I got a bit nervous as the final 15 minutes came and I was only about half way through the line. I flagged another staff, who gave a bit more details on the kiosks not able to read our permit for this new route which is why I had to check-in manually. I guess this airline primarily flies to Japan now and not China.

I ultimately was rounded up by staff who were calling my flight as the check-in deadline neared, and ended up at the U-First line where my hand-carry was weighed and a printed paper boarding pass came. The agent didn't place the cabin-approved stickers on my backpack and case, but time was running out and I headed straight into security.

Security, like my previous few flights, was very busy and the lines snaked out to the airside gates. It seems all the lanes are open yet we're not even at full pre-pandemic capacity yet. Strange that before COVID, the lines were never this long.

After clearing the formalities, I had a much more comfortable 40 minutes to go before departure at 11:05am so I slowed down a little to reach the trains for the 200 gates.

I had received an SMS with a new boarding gate earlier, but it seems the gate had changed again as I emerged in the satellite terminal. I noticed a trickle of passengers and flight crew walk towards the new gate, 229, which is a downstairs bus gate. With this change and the crew waiting for their bus, I didn't think we'll be leaving on time.

Settled into an empty row at the back of the holding pen, I patiently waited until we were called for boarding just shy of 11am. Nobody further checked my bags and I was heralded onto the bus. There's no way we would depart on time at 11:05am.

We went around the airport, heading back to the main terminal's outside apron for our A321 to Beijing. Why couldn't we use a bus gate outside immigration instead of heading far to the satellite terminal to come back?

The doors closed at 11:29am and we pushed back 4 minutes later, almost half hour behind schedule. With a flight time of 2h45, we took off into the clouds and I never got the city aerials of both Hong Kong and Shenzhen on departure that I hoped the extra $50 seat fee could buy.

The flight was otherwise fairly good given the light loading. There was nobody next to me and only 2 on my side of the row, so I had some extra space to stretch. Staff were courteous and were busy selling buy-on-board food and duty free. Their standard announcement included not allowing us to consume outside food. Although it was the lunch hour, I opted to eat on arrival in Beijing and hopefully save some money.

We reached top of the descent at 1:53pm. Although the weather for Beijing was supposed to be sunny, it seemed smoggy and even a little cloudy outside. Since Daxing is south of the city, I didn't expect to see the city even on a clearer day.