Aussie Flyer

Nepal is an amazing place and Kathmandu is an incredible city and I had a teriffic few days there earlier in the year. It was my first trip to the city and it was well worth a visit despite the ridiculous state of the roads in the town (dirt, full of pot holes, generally in terrible condition!). I recommend a visit to all. Anyway, my trip was over and it was time to start the journey back home to Australia and taking me out of Nepal was Thai Airways. Thai operate a daily Boeing 777-200 to Kathmandu and the widebody service is definitely my preferred method of travel from Nepal (compared to Malaysia Boeing 737 and Silkair A319/20).   After going through numerous checks just to get into the terminal and check in it was time to hit the Thai Royal Silk Lounge. Thai is one of the few airlines who operate their own lounge in Nepal. It is quite basic but it's a relaxing oasis compared to the madness of the city just outside! It's worth noting that the lounge is before the main ...

I recently visited Cambodia to see the incredible Angkor Wat (definitely worth a visit if you can!) and as part of my trip I needed to get from Siem Reap to Cambodia and since I had very little time, a quick 45 minute domestic flight was the best way to go. Serving this route around 5 times a day is the national flag carrier, Cambodia Angkor Air. The route is served exclusively with ATR72's, a 70 seat turboprop. I took the free airport shuttle from Borei Angkor resort and was delivered to the domestic terminal which is separate to the much larger international terminal. This small terminal serves pretty much the few flights to Phnom Penh and a once daily to the beach resort Cambodian town of Sihanoukville. The country is still very poor so most of the passengers on these flights are international tourists. I paid about USD80 for this 45 minute sector on the easy to use Cambodia Angkor Air website. We arrived a little before 5pm and found almost no queue at c...

First Class is nothing new on the Melbourne - Auckland route with Emirates having flown it for some time on the Airbus A340-500 and Boeing 777-300ER, but in October 2012 the route was upgraded to the superjumbo Airbus A380. With this came the arrival of the First Class suite on trans tasman flights from Melbourne.  I had been wanting to sample it for a while and finally after 10 months of operations on the route I had a ticket for EK407 in First Class. I chose the Auckland-Melbourne route instead of the other way round as due to headwinds it is a longer flight time by about 30 mins. That means more time for champagne!  

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

My last few posts I have been talking about Australian domestic flying, so let's mix it up a bit and have a quick look at a  flight I took 2 months back from Ho Chi Minh to Siem Reap, probably one of the most expensive 45 minute flights I've taken in my life at almost $200 one way! They sure know how to rip off the tourists heading for Angkor Wat!! I doubt many locals would pay that, most would take the bus.

After my recent experiment of flying both Virgin Australia and Qantas in business class on the trans-continental run between Melbourne and Perth I am going to discuss a few of the pros and cons of each. SEATS Winner: Virgin Australia Despite Qantas offering some flights with their international skybeds, the vast majority of services are operated by A330's with recliners with very poor pitch and some have seven abreast seating with a middle seat blocked for extra space. So this one is a very easy win to Virgin who offer either an angled lie flat seat or a very deep reclining international style business class seat with fabulous pitch. SCHEDULE Winner: Qantas Qantas have more options with more daily flights and almost all are A330s. On weekends Virgin has been putting in quite a few B737-800's with much lower standard seating. CATERING Winner: Qantas The overall catering experience with Qantas was better. I much prefer the proper table service with table cl...

PART 2 : QANTAS Following on from Part 1  this part shows the return to Melbourne, this time on Qantas. FLIGHT:                     QF772 ROUTE:                      Perth to Melbourne AIRCRAFT:               Airbus A330-200 VH-EBM SEAT:                          2A (Business Class) DEPARTURE:           10.00 (Scheduled)  09.55 (Actual) ARRIVAL:                 15.30 (Schedules)  14.55 (Actual) 35 Minutes Early!  VH-EBM at the gate Upon arr...