Review of SWISS flight Hong Kong → Zurich in Economy

Hello everyone, welcome to the 3rd leg of the trip to Hong Kong. This report will cover the flight from Hong Kong back to Zurich.

23 hours prior to the departure, I did the online check-in on the internet. It issued a check-in confirmation, but I still have to collect the boarding pass at the airport. At the same time, I filled out the online registration by Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and obtained a QR code for the transit in Zurich.

I was glad that I did not choose the LH797 with Lufthansa for my return flight, because on 15th July the Hong Kong department of health prohibited the landing of passenger flight from Frankfurt operated by Lufthansa for two weeks starting from 16th July, because two passengers failed to comply with the requirement specified under the prevention and control of disease regulation….I guess very likely the PCR test certificate provided by these two passengers did not have the ISO 15189 recognized certificate.

On the day of flight, I arrived at the airport at 22:00pm by Uber. Check-in counter for Swiss International Airlines was located at aisle F. I went directly to the counter and checked my luggage and got my boarding pass. This Switzerland entry form and the negative PCR test were being checked at the check-in counter. The airport were mostly empty except for the flights to London, which were full of people, emigrating to UK due to the political situation of Hong Kong.

After I finished the process, I went through the security and immigration immediately. There were only a few flights flying out of Hong Kong in the night.

Our gate was assigned at gate 45, we were the only flight utilizing this part of the terminal.

My plane, HB-JNK, Boeing 777-300ER, delivered to Swiss International Airlines in November 2019.

As far as I could see in front of the boarding gate, there were quite a lot of passengers in this flight, comparing with my outbound flight from Zurich. The other thing I realized was that the boarding gate had been renovated, the small LCD monitor was replaced by a big display panel above the doors which showed all the flight information, this was definitely better than before. However, the indication for First, Business and Economy class above was hard to recognize.

Boarding was started at 23:13pm, over hundred of passengers should be traveling in this flight. I was the first few economy passengers to board the plane after the priority boarding. At the end I still got the whole row for myself which was still very good. Disinfecting wipe was provided upon boarding at the aircraft entrance. My seat, 44K. Pillow, blanket and earphone were placed on the seat. PTV was not functional and remained turnoff.

View of the cabin during boarding.

At around 23:33pm, announcement from cockpit informing us the flight time would be 11 hours and 45 minutes. We would be flying north and passing through Russia. Finally at 23:52pm, we started to pushback, safety video was shown a few minutes beforehand.

At 0:07am, we took off from RWY07R.

40 minutes after takeoff, the problem with the PTV system was solved and was working properly. I was really annoyed if it turned out that there was no PTV for this 12 hours.

At 1:00am, I started to watch the first movie, Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

A few minutes later, dinner was served. I opted for the chicken option, instead of the vegetarian ravioli. Together with white wine as the complementary drink.

A cup of coffee after the meal. Soon the cabin light was dimmed with the blue mood lighting and a bottle of water was served.

I had a nap of about 45 minutes and woke up at 3:00am. By that time, we were flying in Gansu province of China.

Then I visited the lavatory in front of my seat. Back to my seat I continued with the movie and when it was finished, I had another nap for an hour.

As I woke up, we were leaving China airspace into Kazakhstan.

Sunrise above Kazakhstan, somewhere to the south of Ayagoz. I was attracted by the lights below, probably coming from the highway I guess.

I started the second movie at 5:30am, The Perfect Storm.

Still flying over Kazakhstan. Very close to the capital city of Nur-Sultan.

Soon, I fell asleep again for one hour and forty minutes. We were already in Russia by the time I woke up.

The sky was getting a bit brighter.

After I finished the movie, I went to toilet again, and grabbed myself an apple juice.

At the same time, I watched the third movie, Black Panther. I still remember I watched the same movie, three years ago on the flight to Hong Kong also with Swiss International Airlines.

Two hours before we arrived in Zurich, the mood lighting was turned on again. At 10:40am, breakfast was served. It is really nice, that the airlines was still serving hot breakfast. I opted for an orange juice.

There were a lot of clouds in Europe, made me impossible to see the ground.

At 11:25am, announcement from cockpit that we were flying somewhere near Salzburg in Austria, and remaining 40 minutes left until we touchdown in Switzerland. Visibility was getting better, and it was able to identify the Inn river in Bavaria.

Shortly after, the famous Swiss chocolate was distributed.

The total flight route. Our route went through China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria and Germany, and finally Switzerland.

Started descending into Zurich Airport.

Connecting gate information was shown on the monitor, and my next flight would be leaving at gate B02 at 7:15am.

We were going to park at gate E23 at terminal E.

Weather in Zurich was not that good today.

By the time we got through the cloud and fog, we were right above the runway, ready to touchdown.

At 6:06am local time, we touchdown on RWY34, total flight time was 11 hours and 59 minutes.

Thanks for reading!