CBR-SYD-CNS (Qantas)

Started by Snorzac, July 05, 2009, 04:58:52 PM

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Snorzac

Canberra to Sydney
Date: 03/07/2009
Flight No: QF1474
Reg: VH-QOK
Type: Bombardier Dash 8-Q400
Seat: 10B    Seq: 20
Class: Economy
STD: 11:55        ATD: 12:12
STA: 12:45        ATA: 13:08
Gate: 14


Well after my schedualed departure on QF 564 which was cancelled (due to VH-TJI or TJR carking it) I was certainly relieved to be stepping onto VH-QOK a full 3 hours later. The aircraft had arived late due to traffic in Sydney. We boarded at our schedualed departure time of 11:55 and we were on the ground for another 15 or so minutes. Eventually we were ready to commence start up with Captain Michael Bourke in control.

A long taxi down to the end of runway 35 (we had to wait for VZC to start up) and we were away at last a full half hour behind at 12:24. Very smooth out of Canberra, I really enjoyed the Q400s climb (my first time).

Once at the top of the climb the cabin crew thew out the food which was a very ordinary sundried tomato and chesse loaf served with chilli jam. This was followed by out breif decent into Sydney landing over the ocean with plenty of turbulance. A short taxi to gate 17 and we disembarked with our flight to Cairns due to depart in a matter of minutes.


Sydney to Cairns
  Date: 03/07/2009
  Flight No: QF926
  Reg: VH-VXP      Name: Logan
  Type: Boeing 737-800
  Seat: 12F   Seq: 116
  Class: Economy
  STD: 13:25       ATD: 14:00
  STA: 16:35       ATA: 16:52
  Gate: 9


Once again we were running late and were called for boarding at our departure time. (still behind by about 3 hours we were meant to be on QF922) Once on the a/c we waited for ages before been told that the had been a loading error and that we would be on the ground for a while still.

Once we pushed back dead on 14:00 a full 35 minutes behind we were on oour way with a quick taxi out to the runway and takeoff to the West. After a rather rough climb the IFE screens came out of the celing and a rather dodgy movie (which I chose to ignore) was shown. The Cabin crew served either a choice of fish or beef of which I chose the beef which was very nice.

After about 10 minutes with the cabin crew serving ther meals still the in-flight service was suspended for about 20min. due to turbulance. Once those trays were collected the crew then served a very hard ice cream.

Eventually we began our decent into Cairns and we were on the ground. The decent was rather nice and smooth as well as scenic fling in over the mountains as it brought the caotic delayed travel to an end.

Buzz Killington

Certainly not the smoothest travel for you with all the delays, turbulence, and worst of all, a dodgy movie!

Snorzac

no not really...stupid Qantas. It will be virgin Blue on the way back!

Buzz Killington

I've always found Virgin Blue to be very nice to fly with. That said, I flew Canberra-Brisbane and Brisbane-Darwin on Qantas and Jetstar respectively a few years ago (both ways obviously) and they were very good too (despite getting a dash 8 from bne-cbr, ugh).

smitho

Quote from: Mini Mat on July 05, 2009, 05:11:41 PM
no not really...stupid Qantas. It will be virgin Blue on the way back!

Sorry to hear of your disappointing experiences with QF - from my experience, cancelled QF flights out of Canberra seem to be pretty frequent these days. May be they only run them if the load is sufficient....which isn't really good enough.
Virgin Blue has picked up on QF's poor reliability record and is running it pretty hard in their Canberra advertising.

Sir Pompously

I Don't know what you mean by pretty frequent, if you think ours a frequent you should head to the other end of the terminal! Cancellations happen, sometimes it is due to weather, sometimes it is due to aircraft, and sometimes it is due to other circumstances which are beyond our control (Like ATC Delays in Sydney, which are very common). Unlike alot of other forms of transport (And popular belief), airlines do not have many (Infact, normally any) spare aircarft lying around. Sometimes we are lucky and have a spare on the ground, but that is only at ports where there is actually a facility like Sydney or Melbourne, which have maintenance hangers.

The snack onboard the Dash 8 flights come and go, and unfortunently at the moment the 'loafs' they have really do not interest me when I fly. There is one nice one, a Coconut Loaf that they serve in the mornings (And the Pink cupcake they have every now and then is scrum-diddly-umptous). The movies, well unforutnently on Mainscreen there is no way to appeal to everyone. Everyone has different tastes, I personally prefer CGI Animated movies, however if they show a horror flick I just end up listening to Billboard or my iPod. PTV's sometime do not offer much choice either, but they are only on International services and atleast offer a larger range (AVOD can store alot more, and therefore has an even greater range than your average PTV).

Shame you did not get a 767, however if you save a little we can always go for a day trip to Melbourne and fly on 811, which is normally a 767 Mon, Tues and Wed.