It’s been around 11 months since the shutters came down on Cathay Pacific’s flagship ‘The Wing’ Hong Kong First Class lounge for a long-rumoured rebuild, and we now have a firm reopening date, with the renovated facility welcoming passengers back from Wednesday 22nd April 2026.

The Wing, First has been a fixture on the east side of Terminal 1 since Hong Kong International Airport opened in 1998, and last saw a serious refresh back in 2013. That 2013 iteration is the version most readers will remember, with all black glass, red Chesterfield sofas and white marble, plus those five semi-mythical Cabanas tucked away behind a quiet corridor.

This new version is a rather different beast. Cathay has again worked with London-based design firm StudioIlse (a partnership now spanning more than a decade), and the result is softer, warmer and more residential in feel than the outgoing space. We’ll get to the bad news about the Cabanas a bit later.

Here’s what’s changed, and what to expect when the doors open on Wednesday.

Reception and foyer

The reception desk gets a sculptural new look, a curved slab of the familiar green onyx, set beneath Cathay’s brushwing motif.

It’s a cleaner, calmer first impression than the old podiums, while the airside-facing windows still give you a proper look at the aircraft and runways before you’ve even stepped foot into the lounge itself.

Beyond reception, a long foyer runs the length of the lounge with a magazine and newspaper library to one side and a seating bay to the other. Sharp-eyed readers will spot HKIA’s familiar triangulated ceiling grid still dominating the space overhead, one architectural detail the designers sensibly haven’t tried to fight – this is still an airy, open space.

The wall behind the foyer is clad in backlit green onyx, which carries through as a repeated motif in key parts of the lounge.

The Atrium

The Atrium is the new heart of The Wing, First, and the centrepiece is a circular, fluted onyx bar ringed by green leather barstools with polished brass bases.

It’s a properly good-looking piece of lounge design, the sort of image that will do the rounds on Instagram for many months, we suspect.

Unlike the old self-serve champagne island near the entrance, this bar is manned throughout operating hours, with what look like high-end Louis Poulsen PH 3/2 table lamps dotted along the counter, giving the whole space an evening-in-a-hotel-bar feel.

The press release makes much of the Atrium being a day-long venue that “evolves throughout the day”, which is design-speak for serving different menus at different times:

• Breakfast: Including lighter “wellness-led” options
• Afternoon tea: With the traditional three-tier stands
• Evening bistro: Small plates and grills

If the photography is anything to go by, the afternoon tea in particular looks a significant step up from the previous offering, including freshly baked scones and proper finger sandwiches on a gold-finished tiered stand, served with a glass of champagne. The lobster brioche (below) also caught our eye.

The Pantry

Adjoining the Atrium is the Pantry, a dedicated self-service space of walnut cabinetry, backlit glass and dark stone countertops.

Think grab-and-go rather than a full buffet spread, with pastries, salads, light bites, fruit, and self-serve tea and coffee. Ideal for passengers who’d rather not sit down for a full meal.

It’s a smart bit of layout, effectively splitting the old single buffet area into “proper bar” and “help yourself” zones.

The Dining Room

For a sit-down meal with full table service, you’ll want to head to the Dining Room.

This is a significant reworking of what used to be “The Haven” restaurant. A warmer, more intimate space than the Atrium, with a lower wood-panelled ceiling, curved olive-green leather booth banquettes, cylindrical paper lantern pendants and its own full manned bar at the far end.

The aesthetic strikes us as noticeably more Japanese-influenced than the rest of the lounge.

The à la carte menu is served throughout the day and, as at The Pier First, features a rotating tasting menu developed with Mott 32 alongside the standard à la carte and monthly specials.

Mott 32, one of Hong Kong’s most-awarded contemporary Chinese restaurants, began supplying The Pier First back in January 2025, replacing the previous Rosewood Hotel collaboration, and its extension to The Wing means Cathay’s two First Class lounges in Hong Kong now share a broadly consistent Chinese fine-dining offer at the top of the menu.

That’s no bad thing. Mott 32 is a serious restaurant in its own right, and its menu at The Pier has been well received since launch.

Think Sichuan dumplings, crispy crab puffs, braised Wagyu with aged tangerine peel and crispy black cod among the dishes that have drawn praise. We’ll reserve full judgement until we’ve been in, but on paper this is a stronger à la carte proposition than the old Haven menu.

The Retreat, and RIP to the Cabanas

This is where we have to break the bad news.

The five Cabanas, zen-like private suites with their own showers, baths, dressing tables and chaise lounges, have not survived the renovation. They have been replaced by something called The Retreat, which is essentially a transplant of the treatment concept already found at The Pier, First further down the terminal.

In place of the Cabanas, The Retreat offers seven private booths delivering complimentary foot or neck and shoulder massages. It looks nicely done – shoji screens, ambient lighting, bespoke furniture, and the same wellness concept already familiar to Pier First regulars – and it will no doubt be popular.

But let’s be honest: it is not a like-for-like replacement.

The old Cabanas were one of the most distinctive items in the entire global First Class lounge offering.

A 90-minute slot (only loosely enforced, in our experience) with your own bathroom, a deep marble bath, a chaise lounge, a dressing area and a pressing service, with a glass of vintage Champagne if you fancied one.

We have reviewed a lot of First Class lounges, and the Cabana experience was – quite genuinely – among the best of them. A pre-flight bath in the middle of an international airport sounds absurd, and it was – wonderfully so.

Swapping that for a shared spa-style treatment, however well executed, is a clear step backwards in terms of exclusivity and differentiation. It’s a loss we won’t pretend we’re neutral about, we’re just glad to have experienced it.

On the positive side, The Retreat should be rather more accessible than the Cabanas ever were. Seven booths versus five, with a set treatment time, means more passengers should be able to get a look-in rather than staring forlornly at a pager.

Shower suites

The shower suites have been rebuilt, with travertine and honed stone replacing the old white-and-black marble.

Cathay is making a bit of noise about a new water and lighting setup that lets you pick from “cleanse”, “refresh” and “relax” modes, which – reading between the lines – likely means preset combinations of water temperature, pressure and mood lighting. We’ll see how much of a difference it actually makes in practice.

The fundamentals look solid with a large walk-in shower, proper-sized vanity, a dressing area with a full-length mirror and a stool, and plenty of bench space for toiletries.

The Alcove

The Alcove is a new take on the semi-private working booth, including five enclosed banquette nooks with compact terrazzo-topped tables, charging points, overhead brass wall lights and throw cushions.

It’s the sort of space that sits somewhere between a diner booth and a hotel lobby quiet corner, and it feels like a good fit for the “90 minutes before an overnight flight, with emails to clear” crowd.

The old lounge had the Solus workstations for this kind of use. Those were sound-deadening pods with a desk surface, but they always felt a little clinical. The Alcove booths are softer, more inviting, and more obviously designed for modern working patterns.

The Bureau

If the Alcove isn’t private enough, a new fully enclosed workspace called The Bureau steps things up further. It’s a proper closed room for focused work or small meetings, with two selectable lighting modes branded, somewhat earnestly, as “Engaged” and “Focused”.

Details on booking arrangements aren’t in the press release, but we’d expect this to be reservable on the day subject to availability.

What else is changing across Cathay’s Hong Kong lounges

A few practical knock-on effects are worth flagging alongside the reopening:

• The Deck has served as an interim First Class lounge since 21st May 2025, filling the gap left by The Wing, First’s closure. With The Wing, First now reopening, The Deck will revert to its original role as a Business Class lounge.
• The Wing, Business will close for renovation from the morning of Thursday 23rd April, the day after The Wing, First reopens, and isn’t expected to return until mid-2027. That opens up a significant gap in Cathay’s Business Class lounge capacity at this end of T1.
• The Bridge, near Gate 35, has been back in action since May 2025 following its own StudioIlse rebuild, and remains the most obvious Business Class alternative in the central part of the terminal.
• The Pier, Business and The Pier, First at the far end of T1 are also unaffected and remain open as usual.

The reopening of The Wing, First caps the first phase of Cathay’s wider lounge rebuild, following The Bridge and the Cathay Lounge at Beijing Capital in 2025, and leads directly into the airline’s first-ever dedicated New York lounge, due to open at JFK’s new Terminal 6 later this year.

Access

Here’s where we have to flag a significant catch. Access to the reopened Wing, First will initially be restricted to:

• Passengers departing in Cathay Pacific First Class (+1 guest), and
• Cathay Diamond, Diamond Plus and Diamond Exec members (guest limits apply)

Notably, Oneworld Emerald members travelling on non-Cathay Oneworld flights are excluded, a continuation of the same restrictive policy Cathay rolled out at the First Class section of The Bridge when it reopened in May 2025, and a notable departure from standard Oneworld alliance norms.

It’s a frustrating move for loyal British Airways Gold, Qatar Privilege Club Platinum, JAL Diamond and Qantas Platinum flyers in particular, who will continue to access The Pier, First (where the standard Oneworld access rules still apply) but are currently locked out of The Wing, First unless they’re actually flying Cathay in the First cabin.

Cathay’s use of the word “initially” does leave the door open for this policy to be softened in future, and we’d certainly encourage that, but for now you need to plan accordingly.

The lounge is on Level 7 of Terminal 1, immediately past security at Zone A. It’s best suited to departures from gates 1 to 28. If you’re flying from a higher-numbered gate, or don’t meet the new access criteria, The Pier, First remains the obvious alternative, and an excellent one at that.

On the evidence of the press images, Cathay has done a thoroughly competent job of evolving The Wing, First. The core design DNA comprising green onyx, understated luxury, and a strong architectural identity remains intact, while the new walnut-heavy material palette, circular Atrium bar, Mott 32 dining (now consistent with The Pier) and dedicated self-serve Pantry all look like nice upgrades on what came before.

The loss of the Cabanas is real, though, and we don’t think we’ll be alone in feeling that one.

They were a quietly iconic part of what made The Wing, First The Wing, First, and trading them for a treatment room concept already available at the sister lounge down the terminal inevitably flattens some of what made this facility distinctive at the top end.

That said, if you’re lucky enough to be flying Cathay First or holding qualifying status through Hong Kong from Wednesday onwards, you’re still walking into one of the most thoughtfully designed First Class lounges in the world. Just don’t turn up expecting a bath.

We’ll be back with a full hands-on review in due course.

(Cover Photo: Cathay Pacific)