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Can you tell me about Quantas Airlines?


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Has anyone experienced Quantas Air recently. We can book them using partner air miles but we only have enough for two economy tickets. I would like to upgrade to economy plus but they are not available. We do not have enough for business. I’m a little nervous after reading some reviews but we are not so concerned with the food as we could bring our own onboard from the terminal.

 

How are the seats and the service and cleanliness?

Impressions?

Thanks

Mary

 

 

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Just to add, if you are flying into Australia, make sure you eat all foodstuffs before landing, otherwise the sniffer dogs will get you!

 

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And even then they might still get you! We got "nosed" by a cute little beagle at Miami recently because of the bananas that we had had in our bags to eat on the flight!

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I agree...we got hung up in Sydney waiting for a dog to check us, because the dog was focused on another couple next to us and won't leave them. The people said they didn't have any food, but the dog kept hitting on them. The couple finally stated that yes, they did have food in the bag until just before landing.

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I can tell you that there is no "U" in Qantas. (It's an acronym - Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.)

 

It's a quality airline that serves decent food and offers typical international service in economy.

 

Even having enough miles/points for a business class award ticket is almost always pointless. Getting business class mileage seats on Qantas over the Pacific is one of the hardest, if not THE hardest, things to do with award miles anywhere, anytime.

 

What partner airline's miles are you using? American? Alaska?

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We used Alaska air miles and are in coach. We are flying out of Sydney Australia to Honolulu. It was the best airline for a non stop. Korean had us stopping in Seoul with a long layover or a nonstop to San Francisco then to Honolulu. Fiji Air we would have a day layover and a hotel room in Fiji. Cathay Pacific we couldn’t get anything. We decided Qantas was the best bet.

 

I was concerned after reading so many negative reports on Qantas. The tight seats, service and in some cases cleanliness of bathrooms. Passengers in Business class obviously gave good scores and passengers in Coach gave bad ones! My iPhone spell check automatically put the u in Qantas and I didn’t notice it! We know better than to try to bring food. Would purchase out near gates after security if its available. Have to be careful bringing into Hawaii as well. Agriculture pulled a carry on bag of ours aside in Honolulu last week. It was the shape. The scanner told me I had an “orange”. In fact it was a small “ball” I had bought our Grandson!

 

 

 

 

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Well, my son (Who is a very experienced traveler) JUST got off a flight from Sydney today, and could not stop raving about the comfort, service, and spaciousness of their A380 out of Dallas. Cant speak for their other aircraft, but if this picky flier was impressed......

 

PS: and yes he was flying tourist........

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I am going to see if I can try that DFW Qantas flight the next time around.

 

At the time we looked at it for recent travels we found that their cost for business class was a good deal higher then the one we went with.

 

I am hoping there will be more pressure on pricing as I understand that United Airlines now offers a direct to Sydney out of Houston.

 

Keith

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Just to add, if you are flying into Australia, make sure you eat all foodstuffs before landing, otherwise the sniffer dogs will get you!
We know better than to try to bring food.
Actually, there are plenty of foods that it's OK to import into Australia. In general, anything that's commercially manufactured, fully cooked and still sealed is likely to be regarded as OK. I'm frequently carrying stuff like biscuits (cookies), chocolate and sweets without any hassle.

 

The most important thing is that if you have any food (or any of the other things listed on the quarantine card), you must declare it even if you know that it is fine to import. Not declaring it is a serious matter even if the goods themselves are OK to import. Customs/quarantine want to be the people making the decision; the passenger is not in a position to do so. And if customs/quarantine say it's not OK, then you must be prepared to give it up.

 

But to go back to the question of using frequent flyer miles for economy tickets on Qantas: you must look at the total cost of the award tickets because if a large cash surcharge is applied then it may be a very poor use of the miles to redeem them for an economy ticket.

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Quantas is, statistically, the safest airline in the world, with not a single hull loss.
Undoubtedly, Quantas has never lost a hull or even had an accident.

 

However, it's not actually true that Qantas hasn't had any hull losses. That's a statistic that's only true in the jet age. And it's been a close-run thing on two occasions: VH-OJH at BKK and VH-OQA over Batam both suffered damage that could easily have resulted in the respective aircraft being beyond economic repair.

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And it was said that QF had a serious issue with their insurance carrier, who wanted to write off the BKK aircraft. QF was so insistent that they not have a hull loss, they picked up the difference between the write-off value and the total repair cost (which insurance would not cover).

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I flew Premium Economy on QF from DFW- SIdney. The food was good and more than reasonably needed. I see no need to bring any food stuff aboard the flight so to possibly have an immigration issue.They will give you all the snacks you want by merely going to the galley and asking. They don’t operate like the cut rate fare domestic US carriers on those long hauls.

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I fly Qantas many times each year on both longhaul and domestic/regional (AUS-NZ) flights. Generally, my longhaul flights are in business (though occasionally I am in economy), and domestic/regional is in economy.

 

Qantas economy is one of the best longhaul experiences, especially on the A380. The 747-400 is not as good, but still better than most. But really, that A380 is phenomenal, even in economy. And don't get me wrong, it's still a LONG flight between the US and Australia, but having also done it on United, Delta, American, and Virgin, I choose Qantas whenever possible.

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Thank you everyone for the info on Qantas. I just looked and the aircraft that we used air miles for an economy ticket is on the Airbus A330-300. We are cruising into Australia. We would have preferred to have booked business class but there were no seats available for our one way from Sydney to Honolulu. We have quite a storage bank of miles with Alaska and since we only fly short flights with them we do not use miles for them. We’re hoping that the economy on this flight is ok. Thank goodness it’s a nine hour flight vs 15 to the mainland. It was difficult to use miles to get seats on all of the partners. The way we look at it is less out of pocket expenses we have to pay and we might as well use the miles for something!

 

Glad to hear the food situation is better than the reviews make it sound. But since we’re coming off a cruise we should have our share of food stores saved up so we can go without eating for nine hours!

 

Does anyone know about economy on the A 330-300?

 

 

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AA inherited a bunch of them from US Airways and still fly them to Europe. They’re marginal in BC, crap in Economy. I seek alternative routes to avoid the 333 going to Europe, even in BC. QF doesn’t offer PE on that plane. Economy is a 2-4-2 configuration , so at least try to get one of the 2s!

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Has anyone experienced Quantas Air recently. We can book them using partner air miles but we only have enough for two economy tickets. I would like to upgrade to economy plus but they are not available. We do not have enough for business. I’m a little nervous after reading some reviews but we are not so concerned with the food as we could bring our own onboard from the terminal.

 

How are the seats and the service and cleanliness?

Impressions?

Thanks

Mary

 

 

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Hi Mary,

 

How are you? When are you headed down under? I’m on the November 2nd - Ovation cruise. I currently working on an Australia tour for about 10 to 12 days before the cruise.

 

Patti

 

 

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Hi Patti. It was a nice surprise to see your post. I’m back up and running. We are cruising from Vancouver BC to Sydney in Oct. and then spending four days afterwards in Sydney. We are doing two segments of the cruise as we wanted to see parts of Polynesia. This cruise has lots of sea days which we love.

 

How wonderful for you to be able to do a land tour in Australia prior to your cruise. We had considered staying over for a land tour but in the end decided to save that for another trip. I really wanted to go to Kangaroo Island. I hope you have a wonderful time. Thanks for posting.

Mary

 

 

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Hi Patti. It was a nice surprise to see your post. I’m back up and running. We are cruising from Vancouver BC to Sydney in Oct. and then spending four days afterwards in Sydney. We are doing two segments of the cruise as we wanted to see parts of Polynesia. This cruise has lots of sea days which we love.

 

How wonderful for you to be able to do a land tour in Australia prior to your cruise. We had considered staying over for a land tour but in the end decided to save that for another trip. I really wanted to go to Kangaroo Island. I hope you have a wonderful time. Thanks for posting.

Mary

 

 

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When in October will you be in Sydney? Maybe we will be there at the same time.

 

Patti

 

 

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When in October will you be in Sydney? Maybe we will be there at the same time.

 

Patti

 

 

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Patti. I sent you an email. I was able to recover your last email that you wrote.

Mary

 

 

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It is Qantas. Our experience has been very good.

 

We have also been on Qantas/Jetstar code shares. Again, no issue especially since the Jetstar one way. ticket was $200 less than the same Qantas ticket SYD-HNL.

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