hello and welcome to Adelaide Airport and later this morning I'm going to be
flying back to Sydney with Jetstar in an A320
but before that, let's check out this aircraft behind me. It's a Vickers Vimy
bomber and back in 1919 this flew from Great Britain through to Australia,
or Darwin in particular, to win a 10,000 pound competition. There are four
Australians on board and took them 28 days. Now it's interesting to compare
this with now where you can fly that same distance in a new 787 dreamliner
with Qantas nonstop from London through to Perth in a lot more comfort in over
about seventeen hours. We really live an amazing time where aviation technology
has progressed so much and it's also a lot cheaper and that's in part because
of the low cost carriers. So speaking about that, let's go and check in at the
airport terminal... Excuse me do you know where the Jetstar terminal is?
ah yeh hey mate, over there. As soon as you enter the terminal you'll
need to head up the escalators to departures and up there you'll find
Virgin Australia on the left and Qantas on the right. Jetstar are just a little bit further
on after Qantas and they have these novel self check-in machines.
I had already checked in online although I have to print off my bag tags for my
checked luggage. After attaching that, we were then off to the automatic bag drop where
I realized they only open about two hours before the departure. So 10 minutes
later it opened and my bags were off to Sydney. Next up it was off through
security which as you can see was a total shambles with only one security
path operating. There was a premium line for business and status passengers but
otherwise it would have been around 35-40 minutes which seems pretty poor and
that's the airport's fault and not the airline's themselves.
But having said that, I was really impressed overall with my first visit to this
Airport. It's bright and open and there seems to be a reasonable selection of
shops with the usual bargain basement $8.00 coffees and $15 muffins. If you
turn right and then it's a little bit of a walk you'll find the Qantas lounges
which is their combined Qantas Club and business lounge. So one of the
advantages of flying Jetstar is if you have status with Qantas, you still get
access to some of the lounges so you can meet some of the locals.
For those of you who may not realize, that guy who I keep
running into was a Adelaide's own aviation youtuber Dennis Bunick. He has heaps of
great aviation videos on his channel and I'll put a link to it below. I'll give
you a quick tour around the lounge beginning with this work area and
there's also a buffet available. This was around 12:00 midday so this is what you
can expect to have for lunch. There's also a bar which opened at noon and
there's a barista all day taking order.s After a prolonged argument about how
terrible the 787 electronic dimming windows are, and since I've got editorial
control over this video, I'm happy to say that Dennis now agrees with me that
they're terrible. Look I know they're a contentious issue
especially when crews lock them in the dark mode so please comment below with
your thoughts. Now here's our aircraft, a 10 year old Airbus A320-200 which was
delivered brand new to Jetstar in 2010. These aircraft make up the backbone of
the Jetstar domestic fleet while the 787 Dreamliners run the International routes.
And on that topic, make sure you check out my channel for both my 787 economy
and business class reviews. And to continue with the cross-promotion on the
right now is this little Fokker . 50 which I flew on earlier that morning and my
vlog from that flight is also on my channel. Now the plane was already pretty
crowded and because I didn't want to film too many strangers faces, I've cut
out most of my boarding footage but anyway here's my seat at the 5A. This
aircraft comes in an all-economy configuration with seats in a 3-3 configuration.
Overhead there are individual events which I always really
appreciate and as you can see legroom is tight and for references sake I'm around
180 centimeters tall. But most importantly for this little avgeek,
there's great views of the wing and engine. Now I did have to pay $16
extra for the seat and while Jetstar promoted as giving you an option to exit
quicker I just wanted to have a better view, and spoiler alert, the views
crossing the coastline just after takeoff were pretty fantastic.
The doors were eventually closed and we backed out.
Now sit back and enjoy some great views and by the way I hope you watching
all my newer videos in 4K.
We spun around and then we headed directly for Sydney. Now being a low-cost
carrier they don't provide any complimentary food or drinks although
here's the menu which you can order from, and I'm fairly sure the food will look
pretty identical to these pictures, of course... In the end of the day, when you
fly a full service airline you're paying for the food with a purchase ticket so
if you're price-sensitive, having the option of saving a little by bringing
your own food is fine. As well as food, they also sell amenities such as
blankets, USB cords and even model airplanes which is exciting. I should
point out that there are no USB plugs or powerpoints in this aircraft although I
believe that the 787s do so they probably just used the same menus
on the international routes. Unsurprisingly being a low-cost carrier
this seat is fairly squishy so it was a bit tight when I was trying to get some
work done on my laptop. I ended up having to give up as I had to contort my arms
to type and I ended up just watching footage from a scenic flight I did in
New Zealand last year and that video is also on my channel.
There's no in-flight Wi-Fi and as you can see there aren't any in-seat TV
screens and so you'll have to bring your own entertainment.
Now keen plane spotters will have noticed that the winglets on this
aircraft are considerably smaller than on the newer A320s. In fact the new ones
are so much bigger that Airbus' marketing department have given
them a new name - the sharklet. Here's a picture of it retrofitted into one of
the other A320s in Sydney and it now comes as standard on the A320neo. Essentially it just
makes the aircraft slightly more fuel-efficient and, of course, Jetstar
are very price-sensitive. well I must admit I'm a
little surprised they haven't retrofitted it to their entire fleet for
that reason. We cross New South Wales on a dead
straight line and here's the town of Narrandera from 36,000 feet and the
Murrumbidgee river running through it. I actually lived here for 12 months I
remember riding around looking up her planes flying over me and thinking I'd
love to be on one... and here I am! just near Gunning we've begun our descent down
into Sydney although sadly it was completely obscured by both cloud and
smoke. As many of you know there are unprecedented bushfires all around
Australia at the moment and a lot of people are doing it very tough.
We only broke through the cloud and smoke as we lined up for our approach
into Sydney Airport. So how was a flight? Look it was actually
perfectly fine. Jetstar cop a lot of criticism when their flights are delayed
but to be honest with you, they're a low cost carrier and their limited service
recovery is what makes them cheap. I'll use a car analogy. If you want a car that
will work perfectly but then if it doesn't you'll expect it to be fixed
quickly go buy a Mercedes. If you, like me, can't afford one of those you buy a Ford.
It'll probably be fine but if the warranty has expired you'll need to pay
for the repairs yourself and we just accept that as reasonable. That's the
trade-off you get for paying a lot less in the first place. Now if you buy our
new Mercedes and it breaks you're absolutely entitled to complain but if
you buy a six-year-old Ford, well... Look I accept it's frustrating there's no doubt
about that, but these things happen and there's no
point taking out your frustrations on the ground crew. They're just doing their
jobs and probably have nothing to do with the delay or cancellations. a=And as
everyone who works in the service industry knows, if you're nice they may
actually pull some strings and do you a favor. Now I actually recall my mother being
on a Jetstar f flight a few years ago and she really had to take it but it was
cancelled. So they actually moved her on to a Qantas flight. now I should
quickly add that she's not a frequent flyer at all and had just paid for a
cheaper sale seat. Now as I said in a start, we really live in a privileged
time where I can fly over 1,000 kilometres in one and a half hours for a
weekend, see friends, and then go home and that jetstar flight only cost me $200.
And just to think that a hundred years ago the flight from London to Darwin I
mentioned earlier took 28 days with an actual flying time of 124 hours in the
air at an average of 85 kilometres an hour. And I can assure you that even I
was more comfortable squashed into my A320 than they would
have been on that old Vickers Vimey. So with an exact flight time of an hour and
36 minutes we landed into Sydney five minutes early and after picking up my
bag I was off home. The plane was adequate and the crew were friendly
during my brief interactions with them. The views are pretty nice and I got home
safely, so I can't complain. Now before I finish
off with some bloopers with Dennis, if you enjoyed the video please give it a
thumbs up and check out my channel for many more aviation videos from around
Australia and the world I'm uploading new videos all the time so make sure you
subscribe and click the notification bell. I'm also on instagram and facebook.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you another time.
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about because because farming because farming tell the locals Cheers
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