This trip report follows Cathay Pacific CX543 from Tokyo Haneda to Hong Kong, a route and airline that have become a familiar part of my travel over the years. Flown in economy in January 2026, the journey included an early-morning Haneda Terminal 3 routine, a quick stop at the JAL Sakura Lounge, a first visit to the Centurion Lounge, time at my favorite lounge in the terminal, Cathay Pacific’s own lounge, and then a straightforward five-hour flight to Hong Kong.

A slightly late but factual recap of my 2025 flying, pulled from my Flighty year review. The year totals: 48 flights, 157,505 km (3.9x around Earth), and 225 hours 47 minutes in the air across 25 airports, 12 airlines, and 20 countries and territories. I break down the longest sectors by distance and time, then look at which aircraft types defined the year, from an A330-300 workhorse year to an unexpectedly high amount of 777-200ER time. I also include a few flights that stood out: Emirates First Class (DXB–CAI), Qantas A380 (JNB–SYD), British Airways’ fifth freedom hop (EZE–GIG), and Cathay’s HKG–JFK, my longest flight of 2025.

If you ask me to name one must have app for flying, I will not choose an airline app, I will choose Flighty. In this post I walk through how I use Flighty on real travel days for early delay and cancellation alerts, gate changes, connection checks, and tracking inbound aircraft, plus how it quietly builds a logbook of every flight I take. It has genuinely changed how relaxed I feel on travel days.