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176 reviews
Back a while ago in January during summer in Australia, I flew with Qantas Airways from Cairns to Melbourne on a 737-800. I would say the experience was quite pleasent, despite a very slight delay. This is my review of Qantas's 737 domestic product. Enjoy reading…
Nothing really exciting happened at the airport, so I'm not gonna share the experience. Boarding commenced at around 8:30 starting with business class passengers and OneWorld status members. After that came economy.
Here is a look at our plane (taken on another day as I couldn't get a photo on the day because of the jetbridge in the way)
Aircraft Information
Aircraft - Boeing 737-800
Reg - VH-VZS
MSN - 39358
Line Number - 3769
Age - 12.7 years
Once onboard the aircrat, the friendly cabin crew greeted me and I walked towards my seat
Qantas B737-800's have 174 seats in total. There are 12 recliner style business class seats split in 3 rows at the front. Behind that there is 162 economy class seats. Economy class seats have a width of 17.2" and a pitch of 30", which may be on the slightly tighter side.
Here is a look at the business class seats. As mentioned, there are 12 seats layed out in 3 rows in a 2-2 configuration. In terms of width and pitch, they are very similar to the US's domestic first. They offer a pitch of 37" and a width of 22".
And here is a look at the economy seats. I like the design and they are rather comfy in my opinion. Each seat has adjustable headrests, an IFE screen along with a USB port right next to that. Below that there is a tray table and a seat pocket underneath that. Legroom is quite tight, but the seat has nice padding along with a descent recline.
Boarding wrapped up rather quickly and we started pushback soon after. Taxi time wasn't too bad at all and we took off almost straight away.
Since this was a descently long flight for a domestic flight, inflight service didn't start until around an hour from take off. That being said, I decided to look at the IFE scren at my seay. The seatback IFE screen had a descent amount of movies and tv shows sufficient for a domestic flight. However with the plane being a decade or so old, the screen had the worst response out any IFE screen I have ever seen.
For the meal options in economy class, there were only 1 and it was this hot meal box with a drink. In terms of drink, Qantas serves alcoholic drinks on flights departing from 12pm everyday, and flights departing from 9am that are longer than two and a half hours. My flight was a morning flight before 9, so there were none on my flight. However there were a nice variety of soft drinks and I opted for a lemonade.
In terms of the meal box it was really tasty and quite filling. It's nice how qantas offers stuff like this on long domestic flights, but that was the extent of the service and I did want to see more offered.
All of Qantas's domestic planes are fitted with Wi-Fi and I made good use of the that and watched videos on YouTube for most of the flight. I never really used the IFE screen because of the laggy response, but I did use it to see the flight map. By the way, the Wi-Fi is FREE and really fast. Videos rarely buffered on YouTube.
The windows on the plane were really dirty, and it did interrupt the quality of the landing photos.
Thats gonna conclue this FR. Thanks for reading!
This domestic flight with Qantas did not disappoint! The experience was really comfortable and I had no issues or complaints. The seats were really comfortable and still stand strong even though they are a decade or so old. In terms of catering, everything was delicious despite the portions being on the smaller side. Can't forget about the cabin crew too, they made the expereince a lot better.
Putting all these positive aspects from my flight and comparing many negative reviews of Qantas, I can say Qantas's domestic flights can be rather controversial. Your flight could end up great like mine or could be the biggest mishap. You never really know when flights are gonna delay or cancel, but the soft product might make up for it. I would recommend Qantas over VA (Virgin Australia), but that's up to you. If your seeking cheaper options, go with Jetstar as their hard and soft product isn't that bad. Rex and Bonza may be interesting airlines to try out too!
2 Comments
Bonza may no longer be an option...we'll see what happens if they restart operations.
Thanks for sharing!
Bonza is definetely in some trouble right now. Hope they can continue operations.
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