US Airways is not one of my favourite airlines. In fact, they rate in my bottom ten airlines based on my experiences of their service over eight years. I have given them an overall 2.9 out of 5 after a decade of flying them. My experience is that every time I fly them they have got worse. A client of mine, booked me on US Airways from Houston to Richmond via Charlotte to get to an important meeting. This gave me a good chance to test them. Booking: 7/10 Upon receiving my booking confirmation, I logged onto to US Airways.com to find my seats. The…
Trip Reports
Category Archives for Trip Reports.
Perfection 777th flight on an NZ B777
After 43 years of flying I flew on my 777th flight. In a previous Blog post, I was trying to decide whether to fly my 777th on an Air New Zealand or V Australia 777. I appreciated the advice from friends to try Air NZ’s new 777-300 and was glad I did. I have recently blogged about V’s superb business class product on the 777-300. This Air NZ flight gave me lots of opportunity for comparison. For those who haven’t been following: I flew #737 on a Southwest B737, #747 on a Qantas B747, #757 with United and #767…
Comparing Trans Pacific Business Class
Yesterday’s Trip Report covered my recent V Australia’s Business Class trip between Brisbane, Australia and Los Angeles, USA. Today, I compare the various Business Class offerings of all the trans Pacific carriers. I chose a travel date of of 12th October from Sydney to LAX and travel back 19th October to find pricing. Hawaiian had the cheapest business class fares for those dates. I have ranked the airlines from Best Business Class on the Australian -US route (V Australia) through to the worst on this sector (United). This is based on both my experience and reviews by others. Happy to be challenged! Or…
V Australia Business Class…Stacks up?
So my new friends are V Australia, the international arm of Virgin Australia the “second” mainline Aussie carrier (Qantas being the first). I have now flown in all three V Australia classes between Australia and Los Angeles on their beautiful Boeing 777-300ERs (I really do like V Australia!). Check out my trip report about International Premium Economy Class . I have now flown with V Australia to LA out of all three of their Australian ports: Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. They have been consistently excellent at all of them. Today’s Trip was actually several months ago. Like this blog…
Tiger Wins Battle- Loses War: I miss my flight and Tiger loses a customer
I did not need to fly Tiger Airways Australia on this day. Qantas and Virgin had plenty of available seats. After their recent grounding for six weeks by the Australian safety watchdog, I was curious to see how they were bouncing back. Plus I wanted to show some support for competition in Australia. (NB Their CEO lost his job over the groundings which were the result of some pretty significant safety errors). Tiger Airways TT 618: 17:40h Melbourne to Sydney- which I missed. This is the sixth flight I have ever missed in my life, out of 788 flights! Booking: 4/10 I…
Trip Report: 767th Flight
According to my Flightmemory, flight number 767th of my life has ticked over. My 767th was with Qantas on a “Red Eye” Boeing 767 from Perth to Melbourne. At one point I thought it was going to be Air New Zealand but life is unpredictable isnt it? I acknowledge it has become an obsession of mine to match the Boeing type to the number of flights I have done! So far, managed it with flights 737, 747 and 757. (How I know how many flights I have flown is described in my blog here). After this fight, I have now been…
Sleeping from Sydney to Melbourne
ThursdaMy No Fly July has meant I have not been inside a plane for over a month and have sampled a lot of Australian rail travel. My latest trip was from Sydney to Melbourne in a sleeping carriage on the XPT (EXpress Passenger Train). It was such a delightful experience, I would do it again. The train leaves from Platform Number One of the grand Central Station in Sydney, Central never quite looks right. It always seems a bit down at heel and always seems to be under construction. Currently the clock tower is being…
Riding the Rails- Adelaide to Sydney, Australia
Adelaide and Sydney are about 1400 kilometres apart. Twice a week the famous Indian Pacific train travels across the country from Adelaide Keswick rail terminal to Sydney via Broken Hill. The train departs Adelaide mid morning (10:00am) each Tuesday and Friday, reaches Broken Hill that same evening, then travels through the night across the Blue Mountains and arrives at Sydney Central station at 10:15am Sydney time, almost exactly 24 hours after leaving Adelaide. As part of my No Fly July, I took the train and blogged live from the Lounge car! The train, 28 carriages long on my journey, consists…
Brand New Virgin Australia 737-800
“Bondi Beach” at Sydney Airport On May 9th, 2011 I turned up at my gate at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith to find the plane that was being for the 1hr 36min DJ 818 servic to Melbourne was one of Virgin Australia’s brand new 737s: VH-YFCcalled: “Bondi Beach”. The plane had landed in Australia four days before, the day that Virgin Blue became Virgin Australia. I was seated up front in Seat 1A which is one of Virgin Australia’s brand new business class seats (Virgin Blue started as a one class airline). There are eight such seats on the plane -two…
Thank you Qantas!
Today I received a card and a model 747 from John Watt of Qantas Customer Services to commemorate my 747th flight on a 747. (See earlier blog post) Unexpected and appreciated. Thank you.
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