The flight was perfectly fine, but given the prices they charge, it’s hard to believe Qantas
uses these birds on their long haul routes. We are doing a full trip report exploring the airport,
airline and onboard experience, so let’s get into it, welcome to Auckland.
If you’d like to know the exact rate that I paid for my stay or my next five videos in queue,
please check out the description below and if you’re new here,
hi there and welcome to the channel, my name is Kevin.
I’m of the opinion that the world needs a bit more honest travel content these days,
so I make airline trip reports, high end hotel reviews and cruise ship tours as well,
all without invitation. I always film without the company’s knowledge and self-fund my trips to be
sure I get a true experience and give you nothing more than my personal honest unbiased opinion.
We are now on our way to Auckland’s international terminal. Perhaps not
the fanciest or most glamorous terminal out there, but credit where credit is due,
it just- works. The queues weren’t long, plenty of shops, decent selection of food,
a few up close and personal spotting locations… not a bad place to be.
There was only one option for this flight- as in one option for which airline to fly.
From Sydney I flew Fiji Airways, from Fiji I flew Air New Zealand and so it was only
fitting that heading back to Australia, I had to fly Qantas, a first for me.
I always monitor my flights’ seat maps pretty intensely and today was showing
a completely sold out flight, so I was genuinely surprised when I arrived to
find a nearly empty check in counter and thought perhaps the seat maps were wrong.
I even bid for an upgrade and my not so secret secret method of always getting an upgrade totally
failed. My method for bidding on an upgrade by the way is to bid the price at the third click up from
the lowest price. So if the lowest bid is $300 and it ticks up at $15 increments, I’d bid $345.
I honestly don’t think that’s ever not worked for me. Anyway, check in was obviously speedy, though
Qantas is low cost carrier level restrictive when it comes to carry ons, so I was forced to check in
my bag which was 2 kg over weight. The check in agent would do well with a bit of tact but yes,
yes. Those are the rules. I do kinda feel like I’m on a patronizing check in agent streak lately.
As we quickly head through security and pass through a load of duty free- seriously,
duty free in Australia and New Zealand is no joke- let’s talk a bit about Qantas and the flying roo.
Qantas, which I just learned today stands for Queensland and the Northern Territory
Aerial Services, is the world’s second oldest continuously operating airline,
having commenced service in November of 1920. The predecessor of Avianca is 11 months older,
but they haven’t operated as one entity continuously. And then we have the big
Daddy, KLM, which by all metrics is the oldest, predating Qantas by 13 months.
Founded by a trio of Aussies, they began operations flying an Avro 504K, purchased
for 1425 pounds, which carried a whopping 2 passengers, cruising at a cool 65 miles per hour.
To pass a bit of time and get some lunch,
I headed up to the Strata lounge which I accessed with Priority Pass.
The lounge was frankly a lot nicer than I was expecting for a no-name contract lounge.
Plenty of seating, functional charging ports and quite a few food and beverage options as well.
In their first decade, they flew mainly mail services between rail stations in western
Queensland. Towards the end of their first decade they began flying seven de Havilland HD.50s that
they actually built themselves under license. Fast forward to 1935 and Qantas teamed up
with Britain’s Imperial Airways to form Qantas Empire Airways Limited or QEA.
They launched their first international service soon after, linking the cities of Darwin and
Singapore, forming the first segment of what would eventually become the first Kangaroo Route.
By the way, I’m going to interrupt myself now and mention, if you enjoy honest travel content,
especially trip reports with a bit of history, then make sure you subscribe because next
year- yes I know, it’s a long ways off. But next year, I have quite possibly my coolest ever trip
coming together and it’s got a little something to do with The Kangaroo Route. In the mean time, to
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Good timing for our One World special livery A330 to land, inbound from Brisbane.
Following their international debut, they continued to expand their network and in 1944 they
debuted their Kangaroo Logo which was first used on their route which led to Karachi. From Karachi,
BOAC took over and continued onto the UK, thus forming the first true Kangaroo Route.
Fast forward a few decades and in 1992 they were merged with the nationally
owned domestic airline Australian Airlines and fully rebranded as Qantas the following
year. In 1998 they became a founding member of the One World Alliance and were riding
high until 2000 when Virgin Blue entered the market and tried to rain on their parade.
To respond to the market share that Qantas began shedding quickly, they launched Jetstar,
their low cost carrier in 2001 and, lucky for Qantas, that was the same year that Ansett
Australia collapsed. By the end of the year, Qantas’ market share was nearly approaching 90%.
Qantas currently serves 93 destinations across the globe using their fleet of 125 aircraft,
with a further 61 on order. I will say, 61 aircraft that will completely transform
their fleet to a level no other airline, except perhaps Emirates could also claim.
Qantas have A220s, A321XLRs and A350-1000s on order. In this case,
the A220s are pretty unremarkable as they’re not going to change the dynamic of anything.
But the A321XLRs will be used for long and thin routes from Australia to South East and East Asia.
Then, there are the A350s which are part of Project Sunrise. Project Sunrise for those
of you that don’t know, is Qantas’ plan to fly non-stop from Sydney and Melbourne to New York,
London, Paris and beyond. Routes that just 10 years ago really were barely even imaginable.
The first of these routes are now expected to launch in 2025.
My guess is, business class fares will be selling for the bargain basement price of $12000 one way.
Our gate area was a bit cramped because of the odd shape of it, but boarding began just a few minutes
behind schedule so it wasn’t a problem especially since I could watch this Qatar 777 being towed in.
I’ve got a Qatar long haul videos coming up in a few months, by the way.
Time to get on board. Let’s check out today’s flight stats. We nearly took off on time and
made our way up to 40000 feet for our 3 hour trans-tasman service to Brisbane,
where we landed 12 minutes ahead of schedule.
Stepping on board we received a warm welcome from
the purser and I made my way to the 2nd economy section.
I’ve always been a fan of Qantas’ on board colors and this A330 is no different.
The seats are handsome and for the most part in good condition.
The seat itself is comfortable but the thing I can’t believe is how crappy the legroom is.
Every seating website out there shows seat pitch on these A330-200s to be 31-32 inches.
I simply don’t believe it. Maybe I was in one of those odd rows that had an inch less or something,
but I’m just at 6 foot tall and I’ve never had my knees touch the seat in
front of me on a long haul aircraft on a full service airline in economy before.
On each seat upon boarding were a pair of headphones which plugged into the arm rest,
where there were also controls for the IFE. There was also a USB port next to the monitor.
There were overhead vents. So, either Australians are
much taller than I remember, or these seat backs are a bit shorter than standard.
The safety video began and we were pushed back.
Our taxi took us past the domestic terminal, dominated by Air New Zealand and we made our way
to the runway, lining up for a westerly take off. The spool up and take off are coming up next.
Admittedly not the best seat for take off views. I fixed the angle when we landed.
Our route today was straight forward enough to the northwest over the Tasman Sea.
Before our meal service begins, let’s take a quick look at the in-flight entertainment,
which had a decent selection of movies.
The screen was definitely not the most responsive thing in the world though.
Time for lunch service. We had a choice of two options. Either pork sausages with onion relish,
mashed potatoes and peas or Mac and cheese with panko and spinach.
Not gonna lie, the menu felt a bit like an elevated kids’ menu, but it was in fact
really tasty and was a significant portion as well. Coffee and tea service followed.
Now, time for the Ten Second Toilet Tour. It was, a little bit grimey and a little
bit messy. Something I’d expect maybe after 10 hours, but not on such a short flight.
We approached a cloudy coastline as the sun was beginning to hang low in the sky, doing a
bit of a zigzag over Moreton bay before landing from the northeast. And check out this double
rainbow that followed us all the way into our landing. After my morning rainbow over
the Park Hyatt earlier this morning, it kinda felt like they were following me.
An uneventful landing led us to a beautiful taxi to the very end of the international terminal.
So, the flight was fine. Could have been better, could have been worse. One of the reasons I like
choosing wide body aircraft for shorter flights is because they’re generally more comfortable.
Many airlines offer an extra inch or so of legroom. But, that theory fell flat today.
All is forgiven with some beautiful sunset aircraft views like this though.
So, I really do hope you enjoyed this video today. If you did, please be sure to click that thumbs up
button and subscribe with notifications so you don’t miss out on any of my upcoming content.
Next time though, I’ll show you that other rainbow at the Park Hyatt Auckland.
Oh and thanks for watching until the end.