Aussie Flyer

My next series of flight reports will be from a trip I did early this year to the USA and Mexico.  Here's a quick look at the first leg of the trip.  I was flying Virgin Australia via Sydney to Los Angeles. To get to Sydney I took VA811, the 7am flight featuring breakfast service. Here's how it went! FLIGHT: VA811 AIRLINE: Virgin Australia AIRCRAFT: Boeing 737-800 VH-VUO (9 years old) ROUTE: Melbourne to Sydney DEPARTURE: 7.00AM ARRIVAL: 8.25AM GATE TO GATE TIME: 1 hour 25 minutes I checked in at the business class counters where I received my boarding pass for both the MEL-SYD and the SYD-LAX sectors, my bags were checked right through to LAX. I was given my boarding passes in a wallet with a bus ticket for the transfer in Sydney and my international departures card. Then it was onto the lounge... Time for a juice and a macch...

The route between Mumbai and Goa is extremely competitive with Air India, GoAir, Spicejet, Vistara and Jet Airways all flying the route. Most operate either the A320 or B737 for this flight which is usually under an hour in duration. On my trip to India I decided to use Etihad miles to book this flight as I found the prices pretty high on the day I planned to travel. I wanted to have a sample of Jet's business class so paid the extra miles to fly in the 'Premiere' cabin, even though it really is a bit of a waste on such a short sector. I arrived at the huge and ultra modern looking Mumbai airport with about 90 mins to go before departure: The drop off area at Mumbai airport

Virgin have had short haul business class on domestic for a few years now. I have read mixed reviews on the product with some experiencing great service and others being almost ignored. Here is my experience on a recent trip. FLIGHT: Virgin Australia VA309 ROUTE: Melbourne to Brisbane AIRCRAFT: Boeing 737-800 VH-VUJ (almost 10 years old) DEPARTURE: 7.00AM ARRIVAL: 8.10AM DURATION: 2 hrs 10 min My flight this morning was operated by VH-VUJ. This aircraft is almost 10 years old, delivered to Virgin Blue in 2006 and later repainted to the current Virgin Australia livery. The aircraft, like all the other VA 737-800's, has 8 business seats and 168 economy. I was in seat 1A for this sector. Upon arrival at the terminal I headed to the Virgin Australia lounge and snapped a pic of my aircraft which was parked right nearby:

I've covered most of my long haul premium travel for the year already (more content coming starting next week though when I travel again). So let's have a look at some of the other flights I've taken this year. I probably fly between 50 and 100 sectors a year, most of them don't ever make it to the blog as they are either repeats of flights I've already looked at or boring short haul domestic economy flights. Anyway, here is a quick look at Qantas flight QF706, the 6.45am service between Adelaide and the nations capital, Canberra. Qantas fly the route just twice a day, a morning and an evening service, focused on business and government travel. I was probably fairly out of place occupying seat 1A and travelling purely for leisure on this Tuesday morning in July. The apron at Adelaide on a winter morning

After arriving from Brisbane  I headed to the Virgin Australia lounge which is conveniently located airside within the terminal. I stayed in the downstairs section. It was around 6pm so people were having dinner. I ended up with some fairly tasty nachos and a glass of white wine.

Following on from my first two articles detailing Qantas' short haul domestic business class offering, let's have a look now at what the competition is doing. Virgin Australia only went 'premium' a few years ago and I was yet to try their offering in business class on short haul. With that in mind I booked an award ticket Brisbane to Melbourne (via Sydney). This article covers the first sector, flight VA960, the 3.30pm service from Brisbane to Sydney on a Boeing 737-800. I arrived at the airport a little after 2pm and headed to the kiosk to print my boarding pass, I had pre-selected seat 1F, a bulkhead window in the first row. Virgin Australia only offer 8 business seats on the B737, 2 rows of 4. This compares to Qantas who offer 3 rows of 4 totaling 12 seats.  Both Qantas and Virgin seats are quite similar in terms of width and pitch, however Virgin do not offer a foot/leg rest. We will look at the seat later but for now it was off through security and to the Virg...

After arriving in Sydney from Melbourne  I headed to the Business Class / Platinum Lounge upstairs in T3. I flashed my boarding pass for the next sector QF864 to the Gold Coast and found a nice window seat. There is a reasonable view of the Qantas domestic ramp and when runway 16R is in use you can see aircraft landing. I went to the bar and ordered a cappuccino and checked out the buffet. There was a staff member making fresh chicken rolls so I grabbed a couple, and they were pretty tasty! Afternoon tea - chicken bread rolls with lettuce and mayonaise  I was watching the gate whilst I ate and noticed the aircraft operating my service arrive from it's previous sector:

It is probably obvious to my readers that I am more of a Qantas/Jetstar flyer domestically in Australia, but in the interests of  fairness here is a look at a short flight I took recently on Virgin Australia between Sydney and Melbourne. The flight is VA878, the 6.30pm departure from Sydney with an arrival time of 8.05pm. The flight I took was being operated by VH-VUN which is still in it's red Pacific Blue colour scheme. I assume it will be repainted fairly soon into the much more stylish and modern Virgin Australia scheme. Here is what VH-VUN looks like at the moment:

Following on from my recent look at a short flight on Air Asia, let's now look at another low cost carrier in the region, Nok Air. This carrier is in its 10th year of operations and now operates a fleet of 15 Boeing 737-800's along with several turboprops. It has a very extensive network of flights throughout Thailand and although it is a low cost carrier they do offer several inclusions that a traditional LCC does not. Those are a snack and drink on board, free seat selection and a 15kg baggage allowance. HS-DBO operated this flight Today I am looking at a flight from Hat Yai to Bangkok, flight DD7115, with a scheduled departure time of 19.55 and an arrival at Bangkok's Don Muang at 21.20. The flight cost me 1199 baht (USD40), so it was quite a bargain.

Here is a quick report on QF790, the daily service between Sydney and Alice Springs. This is a Boeing 737-800 sector and on the  flight I took in January I was lucky to score one of Qantas' newer models with Boeing Sky Interior. It was VH-XZF, just 8 months old at the time of this flight. Here is the business cabin featuring leather seats and audio video on demand in all seats:

Is the Qantas service from Canberra to Sydney the world's shortest flight that still serves a full hot breakfast? It's only a hot breakfast in business class but I am still impressed that they have maintained it even in these days of cost cutting. It is 147 miles or just 236 kilometres as the bird flies between the two airports: In economy a light refreshment is available but in business here is what I was served this month on the QF560 departing at 06.45am: It's a couple of poached eggs,spinach, tomato with feta and sausages. The juice which on longer sectors would normally be poured by the crew comes in a bottle on the tray, and there is a banana on the side. Perfectly adequate and a good start to the day. The crew on this Boeing 737-400 flight have to work VERY hard to get this  meal out to up to 20 business class passengers in a flight that can be as short as 25 minutes in the air, which leaves about 10-12 minutes to have the meal served, eaten and cleare...

Last month I had a look at the trans-continental business class offerings on Qantas and Virgin. This month I will be looking at the trans-tasman offerings instead! I took a quick trip to Auckland, going over on Qantas in Business and coming back on Emirates in First. As you can imagine there is quite a big difference between the two. Let's see what's on offer with Qantas. My B737 preparing for the hop across the tasman

 Some of you may have read my recent report on Malaysia Airlines intra-asia business class on the flight Yangon to Kuala Lumpur . Well now I have had a chance to try them in economy class on a flight of similar length, Kuala Lumpur to Hanoi. I took this flight as part of a recent trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Nepal. Let's have a look and see how it went...

As part of my recent round the world trip I had a couple of sectors on Malaysia Airlines. Here is a report on my first. It was actually my first ever flight on the airline and my departure point was Yangon (or Rangoon if you like). If you have ever been to Yangon you will know that the taxi's tend to be rather old (there are some exceptions). I was in one of these old things when of course it broke down on the way to the airport. The driver was quite insistent I should wait for his friend to come and take me the rest of the way but not knowing how long that might be I flagged down another taxi and recommenced my journey. Fortunately there are quite a few taxi's plying the streets of Yangon so finding one isn't really a problem. I arrived at the airport and found the check-in area to be large and modern in appearance. I headed straight up to the Malaysia Airlines business class queue and was served immediately and given boarding passes to Kuala Lumpur and also for m...

As I mentioned yesterday I have been doing a bit of domestic running around on Qantas and after what seems like forever I finally had an opportunity to fly on one of Qantas' latest Boeing 737-800's featuring Boeing's new Sky Interior. In case you don't already know the BSI makes the 737 a much nicer aircraft to fly in. The windows are the same size physically but the shape of the surrounds are an oval shape to allow more light and make the window seem larger. The overhead storage is shaped like those found on the Boeing 787 meaning more head room but increased storage space and the roof has an interesting new shape with LED lights that change colour during different phases of the flight.  As well as all this Qantas has a new seat in business class, essentially it is the same as the A380 premium economy seat but it's covered in leather. I  found it a nice improvement over the old seat. Row 1 is particularly nice as there is nobody reclining into your space and y...

I've been doing a bit of flying about the country lately on Qantas Domestic. Being a bit of a 'status freak' I have been working my way up to Qantas Platinum for no reason other than just because I can.  So on a couple of days in December with my double status credits promo offer soon expiring I did a bit of hopping around on the Flying Kangaroo. This post is about flight QF662 from Adelaide to Brisbane. I flew in to Adelaide on Jetstar on a super cheap deal to start my Anyseat Award flight to Townsville via Brisbane. For those who read the Australian Frequent Flyer forum this kind of award is referred to as a 'JASA'. Its an award seat but it earns points and most importantly status credits. The Adelaide Airport Terminal 

I travel back and forth between Melbourne and Asia many times per year, often in business, more often in economy.... but never in First Class. It was time to do something about it, and with the end of BMI Diamond Club in sight, a first class redemption to Asia was in order. There were no first class seats available on Singapore airlines on the dates I wanted to travel and Thai only operate a first class cabin to Sydney so this report covers the beginning of my journey, which would eventually find me in Japan. A very early morning flight on Qantas between Melbourne and Sydney. My plan was to take the 10am flight out of Sydney to Bangkok so this meant an extremely early flight out of Melbourne, the 6am QF400 service. At 4am my alarm went off and I was up and in the shower. I had packed the night before so was well prepared to go. A quick taxi ride up to the Skybus station and I had my ticket in hand for the 4.45am airport bus. Melbourne's Skybus ticket box at Southern Cross...

After 24 hours of travel I had arrived at Zurich airport, and it was a new experience for me! First things first though, time for a shower in the Swiss lounge! On my way to the lounge I spotted this Austrian Airlines A320 in special retrojet livery: Always nice to spot special schemes, particularly ones that you would never see at your home airport. Anyway after taking a quick snap it was off to the Swiss lounge. I walked in and was given a key from the front desk for one of the shower rooms. Once you are done you hang a sign on the handle indicating that the room was used and needed cleaning and then return your key to the desk. Not very convenient since it's a bit of a walk from the desk to the bathrooms! Swiss lounge Zurich - Shower Room The shower room was basic but had everything needed and I left feeling somewhat human again. It was still early morning and there was not a lot on offer in the lounge other than fruit, croissants and biscuits. I sat down and had a cup o...