Cathay Pacific will continue the reinvention of its Hong Kong loungescape with the opening of an all-new flagship business class lounge next year.
That lounge will be The Wing Business – neighbour to The Wing First, which this week emerged from its own year-long transformation to stunning effect.
And Cathay is wasting no time, with The Wing Business now closed as of Thursday April 23.
Cathay’s The Wing Business is now closed.
That alone says something about the pace of this project, with Cathay eager to be underway and re-open The Wing Business by mid-2027 as its new Aria Studio regional business class gathers momentum and the Aria Suites rollout moves into its third year.
This new life for The Wing will come just ahead of the lounge’s 30th anniversary, given it first opened in 1998, when the new airport took over from the storied Kai Tak.
So what can we expect from The Wing Business when the hoardings are removed and the wraps taken off?
For starters, The Wing Business will adopt the same aesthetic of The Pier Business, its sibling at the far end of HKG Terminal 1.
The Pier is among the world’s best business class lounges.
This means trading up from the sleek, almost commercial look created by Foster + Partners back in 2012 to the warmer residential vibe styled by Ilse Crawford and her StudioIlse team.
Expect the new The Wing Business to draw its design influences form The Pier Business.
If the deep connection between The Wing First and The Pier First is anything to go by – Guillaume Vivet, Cathay’s General Manager of Customer Experience Design, described it to Executive Traveller as “evolution, not revolution” – then The Wing Business will draw very heavily on The Pier Business.
And this will go beyond just replicating the look of The Pier: for example, upgrading signature business lounge element The Noodle Bar to match the latest Cathay template, with handmade European tiles in ‘Cathay Jade’ and booths reminiscent of Hong Kong’s cha chaan teng restaurants.
The Noodle Bar remains a signature element for all Cathay business class lounges.
We’re expecting The Long Bar to be similarly overhauled, retaining those sweeping views but fanning out from a larger and more impressive bar.
The Long Bar is ready for its own makeover.
The hard-shell Solus workstations will be swapped out for the wider and more comfortable Solo chairs.
The Wing Business with its Solus workstations.
StudioIlse developed the Solo chair for Cathay, and the latest iterations come with wireless and USB-C charging.
Cathay’s latest Solo chairs.
Tucked away to one side of The Noodle Bar and looking back into the terminal and nearby gates is The Coffee Loft, a unique concept to The Wing Business.
We’ll be keen to see what becomes of The Coffee Loft.
Although there’s no equivalent in The Pier Business, we could imagine The Coffee Loft being adapted to serve a similar dual function like The Atrium in The Wing First, as a cafe during the day and a chic cocktail bar after hours.
More importantly, showers are all but certain to return.
The showers are coming back.
The Wing Business originally had 24 shower suites on the ground floor, but these were removed during the pandemic – reportedly so that the space could be handed back to the airport authority.
Few things would make more sense for a flagship business class lounge than to have those showers make a comeback.
There’s also speculation the 2900m2 footprint of The Wing Business will be significantly expanded towards gates 3-4 – an area now cordoned off to facilitate the lounge’s makeover.
Will this area adjacent to The Wing Business become part of the new expanded lounge?
The added space would certainly help The Wing Business deliver additional features, such as a similar rest zone to The Pier Business for transit passengers with a long stay between flights, especially in the evening.
Some sort of quiet resting room would be a blessing for long layovers.
But The Wing Business won’t need to be a carbon copy of The Pier Business: as we can now see in The Wing First, each lounge is encouraged to have its own character and even some unique touches.
The Team Room at Their Pier Business.
For example, while The Pier Business has that wonderfully authentic The Tea Room, The Wing Business may well reveal its own X-factor.
We’ll just have to patiently wait until 2027 to see…