Review: Cebu Pacific Airbus A321Neo From Bali to Manila

Cebu Pacific Review Seat

Travel-Dealz editor Dennis took a flight with Phillipine low cost carrier Cebu Pacific. What can you expect when flying this airline? Read on to find out more about that.

Check-In

Online check-in was possible for this flight, however a mobile boarding pass could not been issued. Therefore I had to go to the check-in counter at the airport to receive the boarding pass. Luckily, there was an extra online check-in queue at the Cebu Pacific check-in counters. Otherwise, I think, the wait would have been very long since the airport check-in queue was quite long and only slowly moving.

Cebu Pacific Review Online Check In Queue vs Normal Queue
Online check-in queue was way shorter luckily

Hand baggage rules are pretty standard as with every airline these days (hand baggage with 23x55x40 cm dimensions + personal item). For the 20kg checked baggage, I had to pay an extra fee of US$28 (~€26).

Since I have a Priority Pass, I entered the T/G Lounge at Denpasar airport. It is definitely one of the better Priority Pass lounges I would say.

Boarding

Boarding started on time with boarding groups. Since I pre-chose my seat 2A online, I had priority boarding and was therefore in group 1. The seating area at the gate offers enough space and seats.
Unfortunately, after boarding, there was a delay of about 50 minutes as we were waiting at the gate. I am not sure what the issue was, since we boarded on time. There was no proper communication about this.

Cebu Pacific Review Boarding Gate
Boarding was done via groups. Boarding area was spacious enough

Cabin & Comfort

The cabin on this flight was pretty new, I would say, since it was an Airbus A321Neo airplane. It is pretty simple and consists of a 3-3 seat configuration with 41 rows, whereas the last row only has 3 seats on the left side.

The seats are very basic, the pitch is fixed and there is no entertainment system and no WiFi. However, every seat has a USB socket. The legroom is really tight but still ok for a 4 hour flight.

I think the toilets were the smallest toilets I have ever seen in an airplane. The pictures speak for themselves. The toilet itself was clean even 3 hours after departure.

Food & Service

Cebu Pacific is a low cost carrier, therefore the flight ticket is literally the ‘naked’ flight price. Everything extra comes with an additional cost. That includes water, other drinks, food, sleeping kits etc.
The service itself was pretty good. Flight attendants were very friendly and after pushing the service button, they would be at your seat in less than a minute.
But unfortunately, their credit card terminal was not working during the flight which is pretty bad if you think about it. A lot of revenue lost for the airline and very inconvenient for the passengers. They only accepted Philippine Pesos and US Dollars as currencies, therefore I wasn’t able to buy any drinks throughout the whole flight as I only had Euros, Indonesian Rupiah and Canadian Dollars with me.
Luckily, I pre-ordered my food online, so at least I was able to receive that. But I quickly regretted doing that after the first bite. The quality level of the food was pretty poor to say the least. It was rice with fish fillet in black bean sauce. And it wasn’t fully hot. The food also came with bottled apple juice. I asked if I instead could get a water. That was not possible.

Another problem was that I didn’t receive my food automatically. For some reason they didn’t have my order in their system. So I had to show them my booking confirmation on my phone, then they needed to double check and then I was able to receive my food. If I didn’t have my booking confirmation available, I would have been screwed.

Last but not least a few nice shots from the airplane while approaching Manila:

Conclusion

Cebu Pacific Airbus A321Neo From Bali to Manila
  • Check-In
  • Boarding
  • Cabin & Comfort
  • Food
  • Service
3.5
Conclusion

Overall, I am satisfied with the flight. It was the cheapest option for a non-stop flight from Bali to Manila and in the end, you get what you pay for. Personally, I found this flight still so much better than European Ryanair flights in comparison. I would fly this route again with Cebu Pacific.

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