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Welcome back to another flight report. Today we’ll be flying on business class on a Qantas Boeing 737-800 aircraft from Sydney to Melbourne.
We arrived at Sydney’s domestic 3 terminal, which is a terminal operated by QANTAS.
Check-in here is simple: simply scan your frequent flyer card or passport to obtain your boarding pass. However if you have an international connection later on, you‘d have to visit the check-in counters.
As this is an early morning flight, the terminal is pretty empty, and I went through security in less than 5 minutes.
This is an overview of the terminal after security. It was 5 am and all the shops were closed.
As I was flying on business, I visited the QANTAS lounge, which is just next to the security and opposite to gate 4. The lounge is also available for Gold, Platinum and Platinum One frequent flyers; as well as member of Oneworld Sapphire or above.
The lounge itself is quite modern and new. The lounge opens one hour prior to QANTAS’s first service, which is 5am for the one in Sydney. It features a workstation, ordinary seating, buffet section, barista coffee, as well as an a-la-carte menu.
I got myself a cup of cappuccino, some scrambled eggs, sausage and some selections of pastry.
Boarding was through gate 3 for today’s flight. There are 2 boarding lanes, one for economy passengers and the other for business passengers, QANTAS gold, platinum and platinum one memebrs; as well as members of Oneworld sapphire or above.
However, as usual, QANTAS didn’t make any priority boarding for business or higher tier flyers, which is a major disappointment. You’ll see economy passengers boaridng through the business lane WITHOUT being rejected by ground staff.
We‘re on one of the older cabins on QANTAS’s Boeing 737-800, which doesn’t have any inflight entertainment system. However, passengers can choose to download QANTAS’s entertainment app and connect to its onboard wifi for movie streaming.
Here are the seat functions, basically a footrest, back support and seat recline. However, I failed to figure out how to use them. It wasn’t a long flight so it wouldn’t bother me.
We made a long taxi down to runway 34R, which is at the very pointy end of the airport.
We then made a steep right turn after takeoff, and aimed for Melbourne.
A view from above during our climb.
If you don’t have a device with you, or simply don’t have the QANTAS entertainment app, news played on old-school overhead TVs are also available.
Breakfast was being served shortly after takeoff. There was a choice of omlette with spinach and pork sausages or a muesli bowl, I picked the former as I’m not a huge fan of healthy food. It tasted very nice
As for the drinks, you can choose from orange juice, apple juice, tea and coffee.
Just a random shot - the Qantas logo facing the main door.
We then made our descent into Melbourne just shortly after I managed to finish off the meal.
A cloudy sky welcomed us
Melbourne’s ATC tower
gAnd here we are at Melbourne airport terminal 1, landed according to the schedule time.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this flight report. See you next time.
Qantas does an overall satisfactory job on this flight. However to make things better, they should strictly enforce priority boarding for business customers and higher tier members. As mentioned above, no separate boarding call for business passengers was made and economy passengers can board from the business lane without any issues. Otherwise, Qantas has made this flight as enjoyable as possible.
2 Comments
This SYD-MEL report brings back good memories for me having done this flight in the opposite direction 2 years ago. Qantas has really good service in the premium cabin on domestic flights compared to the U.S. domestic flights that I'm used to.
Catering is really good for a 1 hour flight. Here in the U.S. you'd just get a snack basket. Looks like this cabin is a little newer than the one with the cloth seat covers I had, but older than the new cabins with IFE. Nice to see QF offer streaming on domestic now, so at least there is some IFE when there are no PTVs.
Thanks for sharing and welcome to Flight-Report!
Thanks for your support mate!
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