Refer to my inbound flight from Hong Kong to Chongqing on how this itinerary came about and why I'm flying home so early in the morning.

Mindful of my early 8:05am departure back home, I purposedly booked the Holiday Inn Express just 1 metro stop away from Terminal 3 so I don't need to wake up even earlier to travel all the way from the city. My alarm clock set off at 5:55am as the sun started to rise above the mountains and I planned to catch the first train of the day airport-bound at 6:30am. The empty Line 10 train arrived at Changhe station minutes earlier, turned on its lights, and I was among its first set of passengers for the day. We set off at 6:30am on the dot and I reached the airport station within 5 minutes.

It was a long walk into the terminal itself and I took the elevators to the top floor for the departures hall.

The elevator even had its own bottle of hand sanitizer for you to use after pressing the buttons.

The domestic check-in area was quite busy but international departures were fairly quiet. The signs pointed me towards pier 3B, with naming being quite odd since that name refers to both front and back sides, so I had to search 2 aisles to find my check-in desk. Why they can't just name them with single letters or digits only to keep it simple is a mystery.

Even taking the first train, I didn't have much time left to check-in since it was around 6:50am and check-in here closes an hour before departure. Luckily, there was barely a line and since I was hand-carry only, I only needed to get a boarding pass and asked for a window seat.

Online check-in the night before worked but all seats required an extra charge, so I just gave up and even had I paid for it, I still need to go to the counter to collect the boarding pass, which is a requirement for this airport.

I then took a quick few minutes to scan around the international section of this huge, long terminal.

The international departures board only shows 4 flights, with 2 to Hong Kong, and one each to Singapore and Seoul.

There were far more domestic departures.

Entering air-side, I first needed to scan my health QR code to leave China, followed by immigration, then security. The first step was the most problematic. Despite all the space, there was only 1 line to scan my code but the folks ahead of me didn't seem to get all their codes to work while I whizzed by. The surly staff manning that counter was already having an awful early morning so it was a good thing I didn't have any issues as she told off the man in front of me when he tried to ask her a question.

I was quite impressed by the huge facility, although it was empty with many further gates completely deserted and none of the shops were open. Both flights leaving at this hour were allocated gates closest to the security exit so we didn't need to walk too far.

My plane had arrived the prior night from Hong Kong, so I wouldn't expect a delay this morning.

Unfortunately, the airport design kept me away from getting right to the window but there weren't too many interesting birds to photograph at this part of the terminal.

Boarding was a little later than shown on the boarding pass but the full flight was all settled in well before departure time. We ended up leaving a few minutes behind and took a short taxi to take-off. The captain came online to announce a flight time of 2 hours and the flight would be "bumpy".

We had quite a bumpy take-off and quickly veered to the right, which seemed a bit unusual as we were barely off the ground.

I was lucky to have had a whole long weekend of blue sky weather, with the forecast calling for clouds to return later in the day.

The flight was completely full and the kids behind me were quite fidgety pushing against my seat and playing with the tray table which annoyed me. But I had enough sleep the night before and the flight was a little bumpy so I didn't want to doze off anyway.

Much of the flight was a little bumpy and the crew served yet another bun for breakfast and a bottle of water each. I passed on the bun and the juice/tea service that came by and looked out hoping to find landmarks. As part of their welcome announcement, they apologized there was no inflight entertainment again but the plane had no TVs anyway. It was also a single class A320 just like the inbound.

We flew above Macau and then out to sea before looping back to land from the west. There would be no further aerials over Hong Kong this morning.

I knew landing would be imminent as the huge bridge to Macau and Zhuhai came in sight.

We landed on the 3rd runway at a quarter past 10am, pulling into the main terminal's gate 68 after a 10-minute taxi.

Then it was a long walk to the trains for immigration.

Hong Kong Airlines offers an affordable option to travel. Their hardware is quite inferior to Cathay, flying older narrowbodies as their newer long-haul aircraft are no longer part of their fleet. So for the price you pay, you won't get in-flight entertainment, far worse catering, and need to pay to check your bag or select a seat. That being said, the crew were very courteous and did their job well, including checking we were buckled up and bags cleared, reminding passengers not to get up and using the bathroom while the seat belt sign is on or standing up during taxi to grab their bags.