2infinity
Member
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2015
- Posts
- 191
- Qantas
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- Red
Mission: Use some Qantas frequent flyer points to take the family on the A380 in business class. Difficulty Level: Extreme
With the A380 not flying domestic, this meant a more expensive international jaunt and a bit of planning. So just under a year out, I started checking for availability and kept checking and checking and checked some more, but still nothing. I think it's a disgrace there is so little availability of award seats in business. I was getting annoyed and frustrated and at the end of February, the frequent flyer gods listened to my pleas, Qantas announced extra award availability and I jumped online and managed to find 3 business seats on QF2 Singapore to Sydney. It was better than nothing I guess and was what I wanted but only in one direction. Booked. Now how to get to Singapore. Singapore Airlines flies direct CNS - SIN on 737 Max. Fairs were $1009 each...ouch. Way to encourage flights from regional cities. Qantas wasn't much better, $950 CNS - BNE - SYD - SIN.....but SYD - SIN was QF1 on the A380, so in true AFF fashion, I took the long route which gave us Qantas Club access all the way versus no lounge in CNS and requested points upgrade on QF1. So on the day of departure, we enjoyed our bacon and egg at the CNS Qantas Club and headed off, reached Sydney by about 11am and headed to Qantas Business lounge in the International Terminal. We did not get the upgrade
, but our flight left on time and there were no issues, arriving in Singapore at 9:30pm and at our Hotel by 10:30pm.
Never been to Singapore before, so we biked around the city seeing the sights. We chose not to have the SG$49 Singapore Sling at Raffles, but enjoyed some nice hawker street foods. Got the hang of the MRT, really easy and efficient. Went to Universal Studios. What a disappointment. Movie World and Dreamworld much better. And we checked out the Gardens at the marina. 3 days is more than enough in Singapore and its too expensive IMO to spend a long period there. Basic accommodation for 3 in a shared room for 4 nights set us back $2500. I was so shocked that I extended my Thailand stay and reduced Singapore by 3 nights.
So on day 4, we headed to Changi Airport Terminal 2 to catch our Singapore Airlines flight to coughet. Every other airport I've been to, you go through security before you get access to the terminal. Not Changi. We checked in, did immigration that was it, we were in. I was a little confused, because i'm thinking.....ummm....I want to get some duty free and like I just emptied my water bottle, what's going on here!! Turns out, every individual gate has its own security. What a stupid and inefficient idea. Well it seemed like that to me, the uninitiated. Maybe someone can explain why it's better. Anyway. We were flying economy, so no lounge for us. My wife was having a fit about getting food to eat *rolls eyes*, so we found the eatery, which didn't really seem like much of an eatery, so I was forced to trapse up and down Terminal 2 looking for the main eatery, which didn't exist, but actually did, we were already previously at it, so we went back there. LMAO
. After the all important food, we found our gate, where we discovered the security screening. On a side note, how come my flights always seem to be at the very furthest gate possible!!!!
I didn't feel like paying $15/each for seat selection, so my research found seat selection becomes free 48hrs from the flight. It's 80hrs with Qantas. There was no seats available to change to at 48hrs lol, so we were stuck at row 61 on a 737. What was with that, there's only like 30 odd rows on a 737. Seems Singapore Airlines starts economy row seating around row 40, can't remember exactly. Maybe its so they have standard seat numbers across all plane types, so row 45 will be economy on a 737, A380, A350 etc. idk? Seems weird to do that, but anyway. Flight was 1:50hr and it took so long for the meal service to reach us, that we had started our decent as we were being served, so our meal was a bit rushed, no 2nd drink. We also seemed like our row was invisible, they seemed to skip us and were serving meals to the rows behind us before we got something. But the meal was actually quite good. It was chicken meatballs with mash potato and veggies and came with a magnum ice cream and bread roll.
We landed in coughet and went through immigration and customs. Don't leave your boarding pass on the plane in coughet. Immigration wanted to see it. Luckily I kept mine, so the wife escaped deportation. After exiting the terminal, we went to the designated pick up point for our transfer to our hotel. Only our pickup wasnt there. There were hundreds of other agents waiting for the guests, but our was absent. After looking for 10mins, another agent asked who I was looking for and she helped track my ride down. It was 1:30hr drive to the hotel in Khao Lak. Khao Lak is north of coughet. I was expecting coughet to be similar to Bali. Although the buildings seemed in a similar state of disrepair, there was a lot more room in coughet and not anywhere near as busy, at least from what I saw. We arrived at our hotel, Pullman Khao Lak, about 1pm and checked in for our all-inclusive Luxury Escapes beach resort chillout. In hindsight, this resort is a million miles from anywhere and 10 days of doing nothing becomes boring after 2 days, it was just so far from anything that doing anything else was a trial, but we decided to go to some of the islands and we decided upon the Similan Islands as they were off the coast of where we were, unfortunately, they weren't open till 2 weeks after we left Thailand. Second choice, Surian Islands, also off our coast, but also not open. We had to settle for Phi Phi Island, which is where 'The Beach' with Leonardo DeCaprio, was filmed. It was a good day out, with snorkelling in beautiful waters and gorgeous forest covered limestone islands. I strongly recommend doing the early tour so that you're not sharing the space with 1000's of other people. We were literally the only ones where we were, but it meant a 4am departure from the resort. Several days later, we decided to go see the elephants, so we went on a tour that included bamboo rafting down a river, hooning around on ATV's, followed by lunch and then feeding and bathing the elephants. What a beautiful day.
2 days before our flights home, Qantas sent me an email preparing me for our QF2 flight home and all was right with the world. 1 day before departure, Qantas sends me an email cancelling QF2 and rescheduling us via Brisbane on A330. Not at all happy because there goes the mission. All my hard work and planning for naught, 1 day out. I was dreading what came next, but had no choice. I activated my international roaming. Allegedly on $5 for 24hr, we'll see if that's true. I hope it was, because I spent the next 8hrs on the phone with Qantas, with 3 operators who kept hanging up or promising a call back that never came, to be told there we no seats on QF2 available to me. (I don't know where my seats went, because QF2 didn't actually get cancelled, it was postponed 12hrs, but somehow my seats didn't exist anymore). I stressed I had a meeting in Sydney I needed to attend, but the best I could get out of the operators was SIN - MEL - SYD - BNE - CNS, departing a day later. My son was most upset because the A380 in business was his birthday present. A380 is his favourite plane. So now I'm super glad we took Qantas to Singapore via Sydney to start, because at least he got to go on the plane even if it was in economy. SIN - MEL was on the 787, so the experience should be the same, so that was a consolation I guess.
After suffering 10 days subsisting on pina coladas, we left at 5:30am for our flight back to Singapore. Again Singapore Airlines 737. This time I managed to get seats a little closer to the front, row 51 and managed to get served a lot quicker and couple drinks in. Another nice meal, Thai fish curry, with a Bavarian coffee cake. Because we were now having to overnight in Singapore, I booked a hotel close to the airport and we settled in there for the afternoon and found a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. I arranged a late checkout for the following day and we got a good night sleep.
We checked out at 2pm, took the MRT to Changi and waited about 30min for checkin to open. Then through passport control. No security remember, that's at the gate and off to find the lounges. As we were flying business now, we had access to several lounges: British Airways, Qantas, Emirates and Qatar. BA is the first lounge you come across and I found it quite nice. Nice champagne, nice wines, self serve bar and although there was 1 hot dish on display, there was quite a selection of cold foods and there was another hot option you could order to your table. There was only 2 other people in the lounge, so it was quite pleasant being there. We were in BA lounge for about 45min before deciding to see what Qantas had to offer. OMG. I was shocked, it was busy, we had a 5min line up just to get in and was a struggle to find a seat for us. The hot food was a curry and rice and looked very ordinary. The champagne (lol) was 19 Crimes at what $12/bottle and tasted horrid and the view is of the check in area. We were there all of 5min before looking at each other and saying lets try the next lounge. It was a couple mins walk to get to the next lounges area where Emirates and Qatar were and neither was open when we got there. Google said Emirates was open but we had to wait 10mins. Qatar was 30min wait, so went for a short walk and came back as they opened. Now this was what I was expecting. A view of the apron and runway. I can see planes yay. Moet Chandon champagne, wide selection of hot and cold food. Sorry Qatar. We never made it as far as your lounge, Emirates was just too good and any business passenger using Qantas lounge needs a slap, but having said that, it was so quiet in the Emirates lounge, lots of people could have detracted from the experience. So I indulged in a couple of fillet mignon and several glasses of champagne and before we knew it, it was time for boarding.
Yep...the furthest possible gate again. lol. Boarding went all well and we deposited ourselves in our business seats. They are reasonably comfortable as a seat, but I find they aren't that great as a bed. I'm 6'1" and I tried to get some sleep after dinner, but it just feels like a coffin to me, my feet couldn't move, my shoulders were against each side of the seat. The staff didn't offer to make up my bed, I just did it myself. 2 little kids crying and making a racket directly behind me didn't help with my attempted sleep, but not Qantas' fault. What is Qantas's fault is their food.
My hostess recommended the chicken schnitzel. I looked at it and thought to myself, really, REALLLY. People pay what $4000 for this flight and this is what's served. My economy meal on a shorthaul 737 with Singapore Airlines was better than this. I was just so happy I ate well at the Emirates lounge!!!
Breakfast tasted like it was made the day before. I was so annoyed by it, I forgot to take a picture.
Anyway, we landed in Melbourne on schedule and made our way over to the domestic terminal and up to the lounge. 30mins later, I received an email from Qantas saying my flights were changed, going direct to Brisbane now....what about the meeting I had in Sydney that I had to reschedule already!!!!! I gave up on that and had to cancel it. Then our flight from MEL - BNE was delayed and we missed our new connection to CNS, so had to be re-re-scheduled. We finally made it back to CNS about 5pm, but our bags didn't, our bags decided to go on our original flights and wouldn't be in for hours. Qantas arranged for them to be couriered to us the following morning.
Mission: ........Failed
I completely understand issues like delayed and cancelled flights happen and I don't have any gripes with that. But if Qantas thinks the offering they provide on plane and in their lounges are competitive, they are sorely mistaken. First world problems I know but the lesson I've learnt in this is that I will not fly Qantas internationally where there are far far better offerings available. Even if I had to pay the crazy surcharges on Emirates rewards, I still think it is a better option than going with Qantas. If Qantas is our national airline, they are a national disgrace.
Now the trial of getting compensation for accommodation and meals for the extra night in Singapore begins.
With the A380 not flying domestic, this meant a more expensive international jaunt and a bit of planning. So just under a year out, I started checking for availability and kept checking and checking and checked some more, but still nothing. I think it's a disgrace there is so little availability of award seats in business. I was getting annoyed and frustrated and at the end of February, the frequent flyer gods listened to my pleas, Qantas announced extra award availability and I jumped online and managed to find 3 business seats on QF2 Singapore to Sydney. It was better than nothing I guess and was what I wanted but only in one direction. Booked. Now how to get to Singapore. Singapore Airlines flies direct CNS - SIN on 737 Max. Fairs were $1009 each...ouch. Way to encourage flights from regional cities. Qantas wasn't much better, $950 CNS - BNE - SYD - SIN.....but SYD - SIN was QF1 on the A380, so in true AFF fashion, I took the long route which gave us Qantas Club access all the way versus no lounge in CNS and requested points upgrade on QF1. So on the day of departure, we enjoyed our bacon and egg at the CNS Qantas Club and headed off, reached Sydney by about 11am and headed to Qantas Business lounge in the International Terminal. We did not get the upgrade
, but our flight left on time and there were no issues, arriving in Singapore at 9:30pm and at our Hotel by 10:30pm.Never been to Singapore before, so we biked around the city seeing the sights. We chose not to have the SG$49 Singapore Sling at Raffles, but enjoyed some nice hawker street foods. Got the hang of the MRT, really easy and efficient. Went to Universal Studios. What a disappointment. Movie World and Dreamworld much better. And we checked out the Gardens at the marina. 3 days is more than enough in Singapore and its too expensive IMO to spend a long period there. Basic accommodation for 3 in a shared room for 4 nights set us back $2500. I was so shocked that I extended my Thailand stay and reduced Singapore by 3 nights.
So on day 4, we headed to Changi Airport Terminal 2 to catch our Singapore Airlines flight to coughet. Every other airport I've been to, you go through security before you get access to the terminal. Not Changi. We checked in, did immigration that was it, we were in. I was a little confused, because i'm thinking.....ummm....I want to get some duty free and like I just emptied my water bottle, what's going on here!! Turns out, every individual gate has its own security. What a stupid and inefficient idea. Well it seemed like that to me, the uninitiated. Maybe someone can explain why it's better. Anyway. We were flying economy, so no lounge for us. My wife was having a fit about getting food to eat *rolls eyes*, so we found the eatery, which didn't really seem like much of an eatery, so I was forced to trapse up and down Terminal 2 looking for the main eatery, which didn't exist, but actually did, we were already previously at it, so we went back there. LMAO
. After the all important food, we found our gate, where we discovered the security screening. On a side note, how come my flights always seem to be at the very furthest gate possible!!!!I didn't feel like paying $15/each for seat selection, so my research found seat selection becomes free 48hrs from the flight. It's 80hrs with Qantas. There was no seats available to change to at 48hrs lol, so we were stuck at row 61 on a 737. What was with that, there's only like 30 odd rows on a 737. Seems Singapore Airlines starts economy row seating around row 40, can't remember exactly. Maybe its so they have standard seat numbers across all plane types, so row 45 will be economy on a 737, A380, A350 etc. idk? Seems weird to do that, but anyway. Flight was 1:50hr and it took so long for the meal service to reach us, that we had started our decent as we were being served, so our meal was a bit rushed, no 2nd drink. We also seemed like our row was invisible, they seemed to skip us and were serving meals to the rows behind us before we got something. But the meal was actually quite good. It was chicken meatballs with mash potato and veggies and came with a magnum ice cream and bread roll.
We landed in coughet and went through immigration and customs. Don't leave your boarding pass on the plane in coughet. Immigration wanted to see it. Luckily I kept mine, so the wife escaped deportation. After exiting the terminal, we went to the designated pick up point for our transfer to our hotel. Only our pickup wasnt there. There were hundreds of other agents waiting for the guests, but our was absent. After looking for 10mins, another agent asked who I was looking for and she helped track my ride down. It was 1:30hr drive to the hotel in Khao Lak. Khao Lak is north of coughet. I was expecting coughet to be similar to Bali. Although the buildings seemed in a similar state of disrepair, there was a lot more room in coughet and not anywhere near as busy, at least from what I saw. We arrived at our hotel, Pullman Khao Lak, about 1pm and checked in for our all-inclusive Luxury Escapes beach resort chillout. In hindsight, this resort is a million miles from anywhere and 10 days of doing nothing becomes boring after 2 days, it was just so far from anything that doing anything else was a trial, but we decided to go to some of the islands and we decided upon the Similan Islands as they were off the coast of where we were, unfortunately, they weren't open till 2 weeks after we left Thailand. Second choice, Surian Islands, also off our coast, but also not open. We had to settle for Phi Phi Island, which is where 'The Beach' with Leonardo DeCaprio, was filmed. It was a good day out, with snorkelling in beautiful waters and gorgeous forest covered limestone islands. I strongly recommend doing the early tour so that you're not sharing the space with 1000's of other people. We were literally the only ones where we were, but it meant a 4am departure from the resort
. Several days later, we decided to go see the elephants, so we went on a tour that included bamboo rafting down a river, hooning around on ATV's, followed by lunch and then feeding and bathing the elephants. What a beautiful day.2 days before our flights home, Qantas sent me an email preparing me for our QF2 flight home and all was right with the world. 1 day before departure, Qantas sends me an email cancelling QF2 and rescheduling us via Brisbane on A330
. Not at all happy because there goes the mission. All my hard work and planning for naught, 1 day out. I was dreading what came next, but had no choice. I activated my international roaming. Allegedly on $5 for 24hr, we'll see if that's true. I hope it was, because I spent the next 8hrs on the phone with Qantas, with 3 operators who kept hanging up or promising a call back that never came, to be told there we no seats on QF2 available to me. (I don't know where my seats went, because QF2 didn't actually get cancelled, it was postponed 12hrs, but somehow my seats didn't exist anymore). I stressed I had a meeting in Sydney I needed to attend, but the best I could get out of the operators was SIN - MEL - SYD - BNE - CNS, departing a day later. My son was most upset because the A380 in business was his birthday present. A380 is his favourite plane. So now I'm super glad we took Qantas to Singapore via Sydney to start, because at least he got to go on the plane even if it was in economy. SIN - MEL was on the 787, so the experience should be the same, so that was a consolation I guess.After suffering 10 days subsisting on pina coladas, we left at 5:30am for our flight back to Singapore. Again Singapore Airlines 737. This time I managed to get seats a little closer to the front, row 51 and managed to get served a lot quicker and couple drinks in. Another nice meal, Thai fish curry, with a Bavarian coffee cake. Because we were now having to overnight in Singapore, I booked a hotel close to the airport and we settled in there for the afternoon and found a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. I arranged a late checkout for the following day and we got a good night sleep.
We checked out at 2pm, took the MRT to Changi and waited about 30min for checkin to open. Then through passport control. No security remember, that's at the gate and off to find the lounges. As we were flying business now, we had access to several lounges: British Airways, Qantas, Emirates and Qatar. BA is the first lounge you come across and I found it quite nice. Nice champagne, nice wines, self serve bar and although there was 1 hot dish on display, there was quite a selection of cold foods and there was another hot option you could order to your table. There was only 2 other people in the lounge, so it was quite pleasant being there. We were in BA lounge for about 45min before deciding to see what Qantas had to offer. OMG. I was shocked, it was busy, we had a 5min line up just to get in and was a struggle to find a seat for us. The hot food was a curry and rice and looked very ordinary. The champagne (lol) was 19 Crimes at what $12/bottle and tasted horrid and the view is of the check in area. We were there all of 5min before looking at each other and saying lets try the next lounge. It was a couple mins walk to get to the next lounges area where Emirates and Qatar were and neither was open when we got there. Google said Emirates was open but we had to wait 10mins. Qatar was 30min wait, so went for a short walk and came back as they opened. Now this was what I was expecting. A view of the apron and runway. I can see planes yay. Moet Chandon champagne, wide selection of hot and cold food. Sorry Qatar. We never made it as far as your lounge, Emirates was just too good and any business passenger using Qantas lounge needs a slap, but having said that, it was so quiet in the Emirates lounge, lots of people could have detracted from the experience. So I indulged in a couple of fillet mignon and several glasses of champagne and before we knew it, it was time for boarding.
Yep...the furthest possible gate again. lol. Boarding went all well and we deposited ourselves in our business seats. They are reasonably comfortable as a seat, but I find they aren't that great as a bed. I'm 6'1" and I tried to get some sleep after dinner, but it just feels like a coffin to me, my feet couldn't move, my shoulders were against each side of the seat. The staff didn't offer to make up my bed, I just did it myself. 2 little kids crying and making a racket directly behind me didn't help with my attempted sleep, but not Qantas' fault. What is Qantas's fault is their food.
My hostess recommended the chicken schnitzel. I looked at it and thought to myself, really, REALLLY. People pay what $4000 for this flight and this is what's served. My economy meal on a shorthaul 737 with Singapore Airlines was better than this. I was just so happy I ate well at the Emirates lounge!!!
Breakfast tasted like it was made the day before. I was so annoyed by it, I forgot to take a picture.
Anyway, we landed in Melbourne on schedule and made our way over to the domestic terminal and up to the lounge. 30mins later, I received an email from Qantas saying my flights were changed, going direct to Brisbane now....what about the meeting I had in Sydney that I had to reschedule already!!!!! I gave up on that and had to cancel it. Then our flight from MEL - BNE was delayed and we missed our new connection to CNS, so had to be re-re-scheduled. We finally made it back to CNS about 5pm, but our bags didn't, our bags decided to go on our original flights and wouldn't be in for hours. Qantas arranged for them to be couriered to us the following morning.
Mission: ........Failed
I completely understand issues like delayed and cancelled flights happen and I don't have any gripes with that. But if Qantas thinks the offering they provide on plane and in their lounges are competitive, they are sorely mistaken. First world problems I know
but the lesson I've learnt in this is that I will not fly Qantas internationally where there are far far better offerings available. Even if I had to pay the crazy surcharges on Emirates rewards, I still think it is a better option than going with Qantas. If Qantas is our national airline, they are a national disgrace.Now the trial of getting compensation for accommodation and meals for the extra night in Singapore begins.
