Monday 25th July 2016
It was a slow start to the morning with a final run through my old neighborhood (Heidi went for a “prance”) and breakfast with my folks. We made the final touches to our packing and then headed off to the airport. I didn’t really want to say goodbye, but I was excited to get back into the air. We gassed up the car at the airport thinking we were going to get rammed on the price and surprisingly it was pretty much on par. The drop off for Avis was not that great as there was not a single person present at the return area and then when we took the keys back to the counter, they didn’t seem to care at all. If we had not taken a photo of the kms driven, we would have had to go back to the car.
Checking in for the flight took a little bit, but that was mainly because Heidi and the Qantas Staff member were talking about Kate Spade, they seemed pretty excited as well. After that it was pretty effortless to get it all done. We checked our bags and all of them totalled up to the allowance for just one person. It was pretty funny. After stopping for a few minutes to get our departure cards filled out we headed down to security and immigration.
Security didn’t have much of a wait at all, but it took a while after they made me empty out all of my camera equipment into trays. Such a hassle. My laptop had to go for 3 passes through the xray and then get swabbed for explosives. Heidi got selected for secondary thanks to a “random” beep which was pretty bs if you ask me. What should have taken just a minute or two, took almost 10. O well! At immigration we were funnelled out through the smart gates (I wanted a stamp 🙁 ) and Heidi was totally confused (i had never used them and she was looking to me for guidance). I was just doing as they told me so I had no idea either, not a good start.
After claiming some tax back on my new boots (thanks TRS!) we headed off to the lounge. Unfortunately the Qantas Club was closed so all Qantas pax were headed off to the Plaza Premium Lounge. This was the first contract lounge in Brisbane Airport and barely just opened but it was still pretty nice. Plenty of food and drinks on offer (not that great on the cookie options) but Heidi and I had some snacks from Mum and Dad, so we were covered. I went for a bit of a walk to figure out the gate area, grab the reg on the aircraft and just get in some walking. Heidi stayed put doing what she usually does, playing on her phone. We relaxed with our snacks and some coffee for a while before heading to the gate.
Qantas Airways – QF51
Brisbane to Singapore
1215-1835
Airbus A330-300 (VH-QPG)
Business Class – Seat 4A
Boarding: 1145 (Gate 85)
Push Back: 1208
Take off Roll: 1222 (Runway 19)
Top of Descent: 1726
Touch Down: 1753 (Runway 20R)
Shut Down: 1800 (Gate C13)
The gate area was fairly full and we waited for a while to board. The flight attendants were already headed onboard as we got there, but the flight crew showed up 10-15 minutes later carrying some coffee. Showing up late to the flight thanks to a coffee stop is a little bit lame. But eventually we got to board. I was excited to try out the new Qantas Business Class seat but we all boarded through 1L meaning that unfortunately we couldn’t take all the photos we wanted to as everyone was boarding through the one door.
I got settled eventually and Heidi was enjoying herself spreading out and was planning on getting snuggly once we got airborne with the big giant doona waiting out the seat. We pushed back about 7 minutes early (proving that you can get onboard faster when you are not dealing with Americans). We had a long taxi out to the Active today at the far end of the runway. We went past a newly repainted 77W from Air New Zealand and a Thai 787 (although it was on the wrong side of the plane). No holding at the active, it was a slow turn to line up and then the engines went to take off power and out we went.
Climbed out from Brisbane’s Runway 19 today and a few bumps as we banked North West towards Asia. While we were waiting for push back orders had been taken on lunch, but once in the air the purser came through to give out immigration cards and speak to everyone. The crew working our aisle took our drink orders couple by couple and brought them out one by one, making for what felt like a more personal service.
While lunch was starting to be served I decided to try and start watching a movie, unfortunately that was not going to happen as every time I tried to watch something, it wouldn’t start. I had to ask to have the system go through a full reboot for my screen and it took almost 15 minutes for that to happen (which by that stage i was just having my first course arrive). Lunch was pretty decent, but the service was fairly slow. It didn’t worry me with this being a daylight flight, I was not in any hurry for any sleep. I was going to be up all flight 😀
After lunch progressed I reclined back down into a more comfortable position to watch a movie and just enjoyed the flight as the Australian coast passed by below. About 3 hours out of Brisbane we passed the final parts of the Australian Coastline and headed out over the ocean, towards Asia. Watching as the blue passed by below meant that our time over Australia was finished, and there was no going back, that part of the trip was fully over.
I relaxed in to watch another movie and do a bit of writing, watching as the flight went by. The cabin was pretty much dark apart from a few windows open (why you would want to sleep on a daylight flight is crazy to me). The flight had been fairly good, the crew were a little indifferent but not horribly so. The new Qantas Business seat was not too bad. This was a very different seat to what had been had before with the Skybeds (either Mk1 or Mk2). I had not flown in this specific maker of seat but have flown similar (Swiss & ANA). This one wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t perfect either.
The seat had its foibles for sure, but it was still pretty decent. I wasn’t happy that it was not really great for reclining while eating or working. You had to pretty much have the seat fully up while doing either of these things, there was not much choice. In bed mode it was great but the armrest on the outside was very annoying (I couldn’t figure out how to move it). I liked the fact that if I put the seat into bed mode the screen moved down so you didn’t lose a good viewing angle. There wasn’t much storage space in the seat I was in, however the middle seats had plenty. I was happy with the amount of space as the overhead bins were still intact. Taking them away would have made for a really bad experience.
The IFE system was very good, extremely responsive and was from what I could tell, an Android based experience. My favorite part was that if you wanted to check the inflight map during the video, it just paused the video in the background and picked it back up the second you went back to the movie. There was plenty of choice (although I had already seen some of it from our last flight over the water) across all categories and I wasn’t hard pressed to keep myself entertained.
As we approached Singapore they were going to run an afternoon service, however I declined in favor of getting a decent meal on the ground in town. This felt like a better idea than trying some of the items, that I didn’t think was all that great. The fun part of the service though was that all the options were offered in a Chinese Takeout Box. Something a little bit different. The fruit I got instead was a good snack in my opinion.
As we approached Singapore, I managed to find the Ready for Takeoff series on the IFE and spent most of the time watching that all the way up till landing. The approach to Changi sent us all the way out and around so it gave us a good look of all the housing around the island. On finals into Changi we came in over a bay area and even spotted a couple of hovercraft of some kind.
The landing was smooth and we taxiied back to Terminal 1 as we landed on the T3 side of the airport. Lots of good things to see to begin with including one of the 50th Anniversary SQ A380s and a Scoot 787-9. Once we pulled into the gate we didn’t have to wait long to get out and it was a bit of a walk to immigration but nothing horrible. It is so strange to be just let out into the terminal and not into a sterile area before heading off to immigration. Security is done at the gate in Singapore and it means that everyone is mingling in the terminal.
Immigration was a breeze (the guy didn’t even speak to me) but because we were through so fast we had to wait a while for baggage. We got our bags (eventually) and trudged off down to the Ground Transportation desk to arrange a car to the city. Cabs are fairly cheap in Changi but when arrive in the middle of peak hour, and metered cabs also get levied at that time, it was easier to just get a flat rate cost car into our hotel (was about $10 extra). Pretty soon we were being whisked away to our hotel.