42. NOU-SYD-MEL on QF in J
We arrived at Noumea airport at around 10:15AM for our 12:30PM flight to Sydney.
Noumea - Sydney
QF92
Departure Time: 12:30PM
Boeing 767
Business Class Seat 5J
Duration 3.5 hours
The Noumea airport is newly renovated and expanded. It was quite crowded for a small airport given there was our flight to Sydney on a 767 plus an Air France flight to Tokyo leaving at about the same time.
Fortunately for us there was a business class check-in that was nearly empty. Check-in was uneventful except for one thing. We qualified for Qantas's free "ChaufferDrive" airport pick-up service on our arrival in Melbourne. I had signed up on the Qantas website a couple months back. Since we were on separate record locators I had to register each of us individually. And the phone number I gave them was my USA phone number. Well needless to say I wasn't able to answer calls to my USA phone number and I was worried there would be two chauffers waiting for us in Melbourne. So I asked the Qantas check-in agent what we should do to confirm the ride as one vehicle. She walked me over to a Qantas office in the upstairs part of the airport where I explained our situation to a Supervisor. She assured me she would look into it and that I could proceed to the lounge.
We went through immigration and security with our boarding cards in hand and found ourselves at the AirCalin hibiscus lounge. This lounge was run by the New Caledonia airline, AirCalin but contracted with other airlines like Qantas and AirFrance to use it for their passengers.
View of the Qantas check-in line taken from the Business Class check-in line
Entryway to the AirCalin Hibiscus lounge
View of the clean, fresh feel of this lounge
After being in a place as expensive as New Caledonia for 5 days, free food and drink were a sight for sore eyes. These little sandwiches were ham and cheese and also
pate and pickle. I stuck with the ham and cheese.
After about an hour in the lounge we headed to the boarding gate.
There were only two jetways at Noumea airport. This one was for our flight to Sydney.
Arrival of our airplane from Sydney.
We were excited about this flight as it was our first ever on Qantas. We would be using Qantas from here on out on the Trip of a Million Lifetimes (except for our last leg from Dallas - Charlotte). Boarding was called for business class and we were promptly on the plane.
This plane had a really unique seating configuration, a 1-2-2 seating configuration.
View from our seats in row 5, notice the 1 - 2 - 2 seat configuration.
The seats seemed pretty new and were very comfortable cradle-style seats.
A pre-departure beverage was passed out.
A menu was passed out. We both went with the chicken in wine sauce.
The chicken in wine sauce with green beans and a potato cake was a solid meal for this 3.5 hour flight.
We had a great view of the Sydney skyline as we were preparing for landing in Sydney.
We landed in Sydney on-time. We had 1 hour and 40 minutes to make a domestic connection from Sydney to Melbourne. We found the domestic transfer harder than it felt like it should be.