Review of Virgin Australia flight from Perth to Cairns in Economy

Background

My annual stay in Australia was over and it was time to head back to India. But why do something boring like this:

When you can do this:

This is a review of the first flight in this trip, Perth to Cairns on Virgin, one of the longest domestic flights in Australia. The flight was around AU$335/US$220 for the Choice fare which includes 1 checked bag… not cheap at all, but domestic flights in Australia, especially from Perth, are very expensive. The other option for this trip was flying Qantas via Brisbane which would have been 10k miles booked with AA, a much better price, but the timings were terrible. Jetstar also flies nonstop between Perth and Cairns but their times - and service - are much worse than Virgin and they weren't much cheaper.

 If you ever fly this route wait for a Happy Hour sale with Virgin (they happen every Thursday and sometimes they also have longer ones that run for a few days), it can be as cheap as AU$160/US$105. That was the original plan for this trip but unfortunately the sale fares disappeared within hours.

perth airport

Terminal 1 at Perth has self check-in.

You check in here, get your bag tags and then drop your bags.

T1 is used by Virgin and international carriers, and this end of the terminal is all Virgin.

After checking in it's time to go upstairs to security.

Security was extremely crowded, it's usually quite empty but there were a lot of people today. Luckily the line moved fairly quickly.
A look at some of the domestic arrivals and departures today, all Virgin over here.

Most of these flights are codeshares with EY, QR, and SQ, as well as some with Air Mauritius. I always wonder how many Etihad passengers are flying to Kununurra.
An SQ A350 arrived from Singapore and went right past the gate, the only international aircraft that I saw from the terminal.

aircraft & boarding

Soon it was time to board the flight to Cairns. I really like how the screens show the traditional names of the cities.

Our aircraft for today is VH-NBP, a 12.8 year old 737-700 that originally flew for KLM and has been used by Virgin since 2022.

seat & IFE

The seats are all grey, unlike the colorful seats found on most of Virgin's 737-800s. The seatbacks have device holders which is a nice touch and the headrests are adjustable. No power outlets unfortunately.

There was no magazine but there was a menu, safety card, and sickness bag.

Downtown Perth was visible from the gate! Very rainy today though, if it was sunny it would have looked much nicer.

Soon we pushed back from the gate. Minutes before pushback the crew announced that were would be no IFE or wi-fi available on this flight, they really should have done so earlier so that there would be enough time to download something to watch, it's a fairly long flight after all.

Once we took off I decided to try to get the IFE to work, I connected to their wi-fi and the IFE actually did work, although the selection was smaller than what they showed on their website and the moving map wasn't available. The selection was still decent overall, with quite a few movies and TV shows on offer and some music as well. I wondered if the crew would announce that it was actually available, but they didn't so I guess most of the flight wouldn't have realized that it was actually working.

In-FLIGHT

It took a while but eventually the FAs came around with meals and beverages and all. Virgin offers complimentary water, tea, and coffee on all their flights plus meals for purchase. I just got water.

All the cups had little sayings on them, I couldn't get the whole thing in the picture but it said something along the lines of, "I hold water and you hold me. It's kinda cute."

I also got an amenity kit for AU$12. It was actually a very nice amenity kit with socks, a toothbrush, an eye mask, a pen, and some skin products. It also had a pack of tissues which was… very interesting. I like the colors too.

Around halfway through my movie the IFE stopped working and it didn't work again which was pretty annoying. Honestly that was the biggest let down of the whole flight.
Other than that it was pretty good. The crew weren't the friendliest but they were still nice and they came by offering water very often, at least 4-5 times during the flight. We passed Uluru but it was only visible from the other side of the plane unfortunately.
Still a lot of great views over the Northern Territory.

As we got closer to Cairns (not sure where exactly since the moving map didn't work) there was an incredible sunset which, again, was mostly visible from the other side of the plane.

It still looked good from this side though.

The light from the sunset also made the inside of the plane look very colorful and nice.

Arrival & Cairns Airport

As it grew dark we began our descent into Cairns.

Full moon tonight.

The picture doesn't do it justice but the view of the moonrise over the ocean as we arrived in Cairns was incredible.

Welcome to Cairns!

I don't have any pictures of the airport but it was very crowded, very noisy, and in desperate need of refurbishment. It remined me of Luton… which isn't a good thing. After waiting for a while the bags finally arrived.
Thanks for reading.