yesterday's flight was downgraded to a B737 (and it departed over 2 hours late) whilst there was an A330 parked against the fence. No crew perhaps
Sew, have it on good authority HKA are hurting severely with the 330, apparently they thought the 5hit load factors they had on the 737 would suddenly improve when putting an a/c that is twice as big on the same route
The downgrade you mention would simply be to try and lose less money, I seriously doubt Hainan have as much spare cash as the snakes at HKA ( past and present ) would have us believe. ( 12 months ago they could'nt pay there airport fees and had a massive hand out from the government )