Cathay Pacific to begin Maldives service?

There’s been a rumor going on for a while now about CX starting flights to the Maldives later this year.  According to this link (http://sun.mv/english/13725), which prompted a Flyertalk thread on the subject, service will most likely begin at the end of the year.  Then Cathay’s Twitter account announced that they’ll be opening a new route, which could be the official announcement.

I like CX a decent amount and fly them regularly.  This would be a nice route for us to redeem our OneWorld miles (AA,BA,JL,CX, etc) on, assuming the availability is good.

This flight is a tricky one to figure out, as the timing of the arrival in Male is so key, as is the departure time from HKG.  If the flight arrives into Male too late, one is usually forced into an overnight in Male as most of the resorts require a flight connection on a small plane which won’t fly at night.  If it departs too early from HKG, the connecting passengers won’t make the flight.

As I wrote about in an earlier post – it’s not that difficult to find a cheap trip to the Maldives.  I would imagine that CX will make most of their money from selling cheap seats through travel agencies as Singapore,Sichuan, Sri Lankan, and Mega Maldives have done to fill the planes.  I would also think that in the days following the announcement, that there will be excellent availability.

I’m not the biggest Maldives fan, but it is obvious that they’re becoming more and more accessible every day.