Review of QantasLink flight from Melbourne to Maroochydore in Economy

Introduction

Hi everyone, and welcome to this new short series up and down the east coast of Australia.

Both flights were booked using reward seats with Qantas points which typically sit between 12,000-15,000 points plus tax. Not terrible redemption value, though when compared to their competitor, Virgin who can often offer the same flights with point redemption as low as 9,000 points it does start to feel of slightly less value per point. Nevertheless, for a 2 hour flight with bags included the point redemption could be a whole lot worse.

The routing is very simple this time, with direct flights both ways…

Terminal 1 Melbourne Airport

With a 9:20 am departure we planned on arriving at the airport at 8:00 am, allowing us plenty of time to check-in and grab a bite to eat before boarding. This meant leaving the house at 7:15 am to allow for morning peak traffic and to find a park in the long term parking. Easy enough, though as is often the case, plans just never happen as they should. 
As we were walking out the door our suitcase fell apart, spilling everything. This resulted in an entire repack in a new suitcase…ETA at the airport now 8:15 am, so should be ok.
We arrived at the long term car park around 8:25 am, a little later than anticipated but finding a park was easy this early. To get to the terminals from the car park you have to catch a shuttle bus, which stops at designated bus-stops throughout the car park.

The bus ride was going smoothly enough, we had run out of time to eat in the terminal, but still had 20 mins to check-in and drop our bags. Easy…except no. Once we reached terminal 4 the bus driver decided to take a number of calls and when asked how long it would be before reaching terminal 1 he insisted it would only be 3 mins. We opted to stay onboard as a result rather than take a 10 minute walk. Finally he sat down, only to start eating his breakfast, with 7 minutes until check-in closure I decided to check-in on the app. No printed boarding pass but oh well.

A quick snap of a WHSmith in the arrivals hall as we ran to the check-in counters.

We finally reached terminal 1 and ran to the bag drop where we managed to print 1 of our bag tags before it closed, thankfully our second bag was a carry on size (though overweight) which the Qantas staff let us take as a carry on thankfully. Boarding had already started at this point.

Security was a breeze as it often is in Melbourne.

Despite the messy morning we made it to the gate on time and boarded immediately.

The Flight - QF1568

Today's flight was on an A220-300, VH-X4L a brand new aircraft delivered to QantasLink 2 weeks before this flight. The seating layout in economy is 2-3, where we had a row of 2 to ourselves.

The seat itself is fairly standard with a tray table, charging points and a device holder for inflight streaming.

Legroom was decent, especially for only a 2 hour flight.

Pushback was on time, while the safety briefing was done.

Engine start-up

A longer taxi this morning allowing us to do some spotting.

A QantasLink E190 leased from Alliance which is yet to be painted in the QantasLink livery. And in the background one of Qantas' new A321 XLR's.

Two Qantas A330's at the international terminal. It's clear who the dominant airline is here.

A Thai A350-900, 2 x Jetstar 787-8's and a Royal Brunei 787-8.

We made it to the holding point and were informed we were number 6 in the queue and to expect a 20 minute wait.

While waiting we saw a Vietnam Airlines A350-900 land.

We finally made it to the front of the queue and started our take-off roll.

And we are off…

QantasLink A220's are equipped with inflight wifi and a streaming service through the entertainment app.

Connection was easy after watching a 30 second ad. Wifi worked well and was relatively fast, though I got the feeling speed was very dependant on the number of users at a time.

The entertainment app had a number of good choices and was quite extensive for a short flight.

There was even an inflight map function

A feature I liked was the inflight map would actually show which towns and landmarks you were flying over at the time. Made for some more interesting viewing out the window

Well this feature would have been useful if it wasn't cloudy outside.

The flight attendants came around after take off and offered the little one a travel pack with some stickers, a colouring book and pencils. I am not sure if this is exclusively offered on QantasLink but we were not offered this on the return leg on Qantas.

Cabin atmosphere during the flight.

Qantas is still one of the few airlines that offer an inflight magazine which I enjoyed having a look through.

Half way through the flight the drink and snack service started. For drinks I went with a coffee and cheese and pesto mini pizzas were offered. The coffee was as expected, average. Though the pizzas were surprisingly good, we even got an extra for the little one though she wasn't very interested so shared it with my wife. 

Descent eventually began with some lovely views of the coast.

The Brisbane bay area, with Brisbane airport able to be seen through the clouds just north of the wing.

The Sunshine Coast surf coast with Sunrise beach able to be seen at the forefront.

Flying over Noosa Headland

Arrival

And touchdown!

We de-boarded from the front of the aircraft out onto the tarmac. Which allowed for a final view of our aircraft…

Maroochydore airport is currently undergoing big renovations and extensions resulting in most of the airport being under construction. With all flights arriving and departing at the same time this results in a lot of congestion. Four aircraft all land close together and with only two baggage belts available it gets very messy.

This is the arrivals hall before it got crowded.

Unfortunately, today one of the belts broke so all four arrivals were put on the one belt. This resulted in chaos with bags falling of the belt, staff just started putting bags on the ground wherever they fit and no clear direction where to find your bags. To sum it up it was a mess and poorly organised to say the least. We eventually got our bags and left into the warm Queensland sun, thus ending today's trip.

I'll leave you with an overview of the route taken.