Kremmen
Mar 27, 05, 2:02 pm
As many of you know, Qantas is about to massively devalue their frequent flyer points. MEL-DRW-PER-MEL in business class was 37.5k a few years ago. It's 55k now. It'll be over 100k if booked after May! So, time to use them before they halve. Apart from that, I owed FlyingPenguin some Starwood points, so this was a way to repay the debt, when taking her along.
It is worth noting that as well as the visible reduction in value, there is also a snide, unannounced reduction in value taking place constantly. Qantas is progressively getting more and more charges (airport fees, insurance costs, fuel), which have always been a cost of doing business, and adding them separately to the cost of tickets. While this has no effect on bought tickets, since the ACCC forces the airlines here to quote total prices, its only effect is to screw over users of frequent flyer points. While trips such as this were free a few years ago, the charges this time amounted to $212.26 for 2 people. That's quite a bit of revenue for supposedly free tickets.
At the airport, we went to the business class line, since the machines were all marked "out of service". Our checkin agent, who didn't offer us any seating choices, said that this is because they don't save much time. I guess he doesn't think that providing service to customers is relevant, only saving time for agents.
QF816 MEL-DRW 73H 3D/F 20/3/05 2040-2330 (actual 2113-2330)
After a late incoming plane, there was something strange about baggage. I watched as they loaded two dogs into the hold, then unloaded the dogs and a heap of luggage, then loaded the dogs again! Hence the late departure.
The plane was quite full, completely so in J. FAs were good, hot towels were, dinner was decent: stir-fry pepper beef, veggies, rice, cold roll, salad with aggressive herb vinaigrette, chocolate. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was quite a watchable movie.... Moreso on the 73H, since it has as many screens for 12 passengers as the 332 has for almost triple the number. It was to my amazement that on such a flight, in J, there are no liqueurs at all! In this respect, it's below the standard of US domestic flights, and that's pathetic.
Also pathetic is that atrocious delay in bringing up a wheelchair from the hold. I was told that they don't start removing any baggage from the plane until after all passengers are off. This is clearly untrue, since those passengers waiting for the wheelchair are still on the plane waiting. So, I guess they mean "all passengers except you guys".
It is a shame that the devaluation of their loyalty scheme on one hand is being magnified by the deterioration of service on the other. Business class is hardly worth flying any more, even on points at current values.
We stayed at the Mirambeena "Resort" Darwin, booked on lastminute.com.au at $84/night, about 1/3 the cost of Travelocity/Expedia/etc. The swimming pools there are excellent. The only downside was that the only accessible room available was a smoking room, and this affected sleep for both of us. To their credit, the staff provided air fresheners and eucalyptus spray and did what they could, but the management needs to rethink the stupidity of allowing smoking in rooms that are for the disabled.
Darwin's a strange little town. We were serenaded by drunken aborigines. We saw seemingly endless empty ex-shops in little ex-arcades. We saw a girl one night wearing a blue scarf as a top: from the back, you could see two horizontal bits of scarf, at neck and waist; from the front, you could see two vertical strips of scarf connecting to the waist strip; from the side, you could see ... a lot.
For a good lunch, we found nothing better than Social Beast, in one of the arcades off the Smith St Mall: friendly staff; a great array of really excellent toasted wraps, turkish bread, baked potatoes, salads, etc.
Note that there are two Woolworths in Darwin, about a block apart. The one on Smith St is old, cruddy, badly laid out and allows their ice cream freezer section to defrost while full of ice cream. The other one, which happens to be closer to the Mirambeena is modern, well laid out and had delicious mini-pavlovas! Even better, the $2 mini pavlova happened to print on a shopper docket 2 for 1 discount coupon for the Mirambeena's own restaurant, Treetops. Treetops was somewhat expensive at full price but, at 2 for 1, very good value. The barramundi and kangaroo were both excellent.
We headed of to the airport early, as we'd noticed that they offer free wireless access in the gate area. (The Qantas Club still offers horrendously expensive Telstra wireless access too.) After we checked our email, it was pre-boarding time.
QF793 DRW-PER 73H 3D/F 24/3 1415-1635 (actual 1505-1705)
We then sat on the ground for ages, as a storm moved across. Even when non-Qantas ground crew started working, we sat for some time, as Qantas requires the storm to be 5 miles away. Finally, we got going and received lovely hot towels. Only 1 copy of The Australian and 2 copies of the Fin Review were available, so they were grabbed by those in row 1, leaving the rest of us with some local Darwin rag as the only newspaper option.
Lunch was served at a mind-bogglingly slow rate. Some of row 1 had finished by the time row 2 had been served, Some of row 2 had finished by the time row 3 had been served. For what I believe may be the first time in my life, the only hot meal choice anywhere in the plane was fish. Worse still, the fish was apparently terribly over-cooked. I had the lamb salad which was, as salads go, excellent ... especially with some of the mashed potato from the fish dish. The bread rolls were warm, too. Later, ice creams were served.
Ground handling of the wheelchair was as bad as Darwin. The Qantas woman told me that we should be grateful that they would go to all the effort to bring the wheelchair up at all. When I told her that I would only consider it good service if it were done promptly, she told me I could always use another airline and stormed off.
It is worth noting that as well as the visible reduction in value, there is also a snide, unannounced reduction in value taking place constantly. Qantas is progressively getting more and more charges (airport fees, insurance costs, fuel), which have always been a cost of doing business, and adding them separately to the cost of tickets. While this has no effect on bought tickets, since the ACCC forces the airlines here to quote total prices, its only effect is to screw over users of frequent flyer points. While trips such as this were free a few years ago, the charges this time amounted to $212.26 for 2 people. That's quite a bit of revenue for supposedly free tickets.
At the airport, we went to the business class line, since the machines were all marked "out of service". Our checkin agent, who didn't offer us any seating choices, said that this is because they don't save much time. I guess he doesn't think that providing service to customers is relevant, only saving time for agents.
QF816 MEL-DRW 73H 3D/F 20/3/05 2040-2330 (actual 2113-2330)
After a late incoming plane, there was something strange about baggage. I watched as they loaded two dogs into the hold, then unloaded the dogs and a heap of luggage, then loaded the dogs again! Hence the late departure.
The plane was quite full, completely so in J. FAs were good, hot towels were, dinner was decent: stir-fry pepper beef, veggies, rice, cold roll, salad with aggressive herb vinaigrette, chocolate. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was quite a watchable movie.... Moreso on the 73H, since it has as many screens for 12 passengers as the 332 has for almost triple the number. It was to my amazement that on such a flight, in J, there are no liqueurs at all! In this respect, it's below the standard of US domestic flights, and that's pathetic.
Also pathetic is that atrocious delay in bringing up a wheelchair from the hold. I was told that they don't start removing any baggage from the plane until after all passengers are off. This is clearly untrue, since those passengers waiting for the wheelchair are still on the plane waiting. So, I guess they mean "all passengers except you guys".
It is a shame that the devaluation of their loyalty scheme on one hand is being magnified by the deterioration of service on the other. Business class is hardly worth flying any more, even on points at current values.
We stayed at the Mirambeena "Resort" Darwin, booked on lastminute.com.au at $84/night, about 1/3 the cost of Travelocity/Expedia/etc. The swimming pools there are excellent. The only downside was that the only accessible room available was a smoking room, and this affected sleep for both of us. To their credit, the staff provided air fresheners and eucalyptus spray and did what they could, but the management needs to rethink the stupidity of allowing smoking in rooms that are for the disabled.
Darwin's a strange little town. We were serenaded by drunken aborigines. We saw seemingly endless empty ex-shops in little ex-arcades. We saw a girl one night wearing a blue scarf as a top: from the back, you could see two horizontal bits of scarf, at neck and waist; from the front, you could see two vertical strips of scarf connecting to the waist strip; from the side, you could see ... a lot.
For a good lunch, we found nothing better than Social Beast, in one of the arcades off the Smith St Mall: friendly staff; a great array of really excellent toasted wraps, turkish bread, baked potatoes, salads, etc.
Note that there are two Woolworths in Darwin, about a block apart. The one on Smith St is old, cruddy, badly laid out and allows their ice cream freezer section to defrost while full of ice cream. The other one, which happens to be closer to the Mirambeena is modern, well laid out and had delicious mini-pavlovas! Even better, the $2 mini pavlova happened to print on a shopper docket 2 for 1 discount coupon for the Mirambeena's own restaurant, Treetops. Treetops was somewhat expensive at full price but, at 2 for 1, very good value. The barramundi and kangaroo were both excellent.
We headed of to the airport early, as we'd noticed that they offer free wireless access in the gate area. (The Qantas Club still offers horrendously expensive Telstra wireless access too.) After we checked our email, it was pre-boarding time.
QF793 DRW-PER 73H 3D/F 24/3 1415-1635 (actual 1505-1705)
We then sat on the ground for ages, as a storm moved across. Even when non-Qantas ground crew started working, we sat for some time, as Qantas requires the storm to be 5 miles away. Finally, we got going and received lovely hot towels. Only 1 copy of The Australian and 2 copies of the Fin Review were available, so they were grabbed by those in row 1, leaving the rest of us with some local Darwin rag as the only newspaper option.
Lunch was served at a mind-bogglingly slow rate. Some of row 1 had finished by the time row 2 had been served, Some of row 2 had finished by the time row 3 had been served. For what I believe may be the first time in my life, the only hot meal choice anywhere in the plane was fish. Worse still, the fish was apparently terribly over-cooked. I had the lamb salad which was, as salads go, excellent ... especially with some of the mashed potato from the fish dish. The bread rolls were warm, too. Later, ice creams were served.
Ground handling of the wheelchair was as bad as Darwin. The Qantas woman told me that we should be grateful that they would go to all the effort to bring the wheelchair up at all. When I told her that I would only consider it good service if it were done promptly, she told me I could always use another airline and stormed off.