Cathay Pacific is scheduling a short-term Airbus A350-1000 operation on its Hong Kong-Delhi route in the fourth quarter of 2026, putting its largest Airbus twinjet on one of the two daily rotations that currently rely on the Boeing 777-300ER.
According to schedule filings, from 25 October 2026 to 30 November 2026 one of the two daily services, the CX695/698 pairing, will be operated by the A350-1000 instead of the 777-300ER. The second daily rotation, CX679/694, continues to alternate between the Airbus A350-900 and the 777-300ER depending on the day of the week.
The revised timetable
The A350-1000 rotation is timed as an overnight pairing. CX695 departs Hong Kong at 17:40 and arrives in Delhi at 21:35, while the return CX698 leaves Delhi at 22:45 and lands back in Hong Kong at 06:15 the following morning. Both legs operate daily through the period. The parallel CX679 service departs Hong Kong at 20:15 for a 00:10 arrival in Delhi, with CX694 returning from Delhi at 01:30 and reaching Hong Kong at 09:25.
What the A350-1000 brings to the pairing
The A350-1000 is the stretched member of the A350 family and the largest Airbus type in the Cathay Pacific fleet. Compared with the A350-900 it offers a longer fuselage and more seats, which makes it a useful tool for a carrier that wants to add capacity on a route without adding a frequency. Substituting it for the 777-300ER is a different kind of change: the Boeing is a larger and older-generation aircraft, and swapping it for the Airbus generally trades some outright capacity for better fuel efficiency per seat.
Short-term aircraft substitutions of this kind are routine in long-haul network planning. They are usually driven by fleet availability rather than by a strategic decision about the route, and they can reflect maintenance rotations, aircraft deliveries, or capacity being redeployed from another market for a defined window. The fact that this A350-1000 operation is filed for a five-week block rather than the whole winter season points to exactly that sort of tactical adjustment.
Hong Kong-Delhi in the Cathay network
Delhi is one of Cathay Pacific's established Indian destinations, and a twice-daily service places it among the better-served points on the carrier's South Asian network. India has been an area of renewed focus for Hong Kong-based carriers as traffic between the two markets has recovered, both for point-to-point demand and for passengers connecting over Hong Kong to destinations in East Asia, Australia and North America.
The overnight structure of both rotations is significant for that connecting traffic. Arrivals into Delhi late in the evening and departures back to Hong Kong shortly before midnight are designed to line up with early-morning banks at the Hong Kong hub, allowing onward connections without a long layover.
Subject to change
As with all filed schedules, the arrangement remains provisional and can be revised before the operating window opens. Airlines routinely adjust equipment assignments as the season approaches, and a substitution filed in August for late October is more of a statement of current planning than a firm commitment. Cathay Pacific has not published a separate announcement about the change.
Sources: AeroRoutes. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Marco Bianchi.
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