Flight: QF29, SYD-HKG Thursday 9th March 2006.
Seat 23D, Sequence 83
Gate 24
Reg VH-OJN, Scheduled 18:00 – 23:50
Board: 21:50
Pushback 22:18
Take Off Roll: 22:37
Touchdown: 03:36
At gate: 03:45
Miles Travelled: 4,581, Accum: 5,020
Qantas FF Points Earned: 23,819 (SYD-[HKG-]LHR), Accum 24,819
Entering the aircraft and turning left down the first aisle, my allocated seat was the very first one on the left. I quickly stowed my bags in the above lockers and sat down. I accepted the proffered champagne and sipped away.
Only the one door was being used and I observed the passing parade of people as they wended there way down the aircraft to their seats.
Boarding took nearly 30 minutes and I accepted another glass of bubbles. Finally the doors were closed and the captain come on the PA and apologised for the delay. He alluded to industrial actions as being these cause without actually saying so; “Slight other problems in the news”.
Push back followed shortly after, but we then had to taxi down to the end of the main North-South runway. At least it was not to the third runway. Take off was straight forward, albeit after the curfew time. I have seen some debate on whether this curfew is for push back or take off; I myself was simply glad to be under way.
The first officer announced we would be tracking over Wagga Wagga, to the east of Darwin and above Manilla with an estimated touch down at 03:30 at HKIA.
I will post the menus elsewhere, but I chose the Snapper Dish for my Main Course. In regard to the starter/entrée, after getting the soup and having a taste I found I really did not like it at all and had decided giving it a miss would be appropriate. As it happened, the elder gentleman in 23B was served after me and he passed on the soup full stop. To my surprise he was offered a prawn salad as an alternative which he assented to. This was not on the menu, so I enquired about one for myself and with a “certainly Sir”, my soup morphed with a flourish into a salad of two reasonably large peeled prawns in a bed of rocket leaves dressed with a tarte mayonnaise. Quite nice, as was the remainder of the food service with the snapper dish, the cheese and the chocolates all washed down with champagne and later the very nice Muscat. Skipped coffee as I planned to sleep.
While this was happening I watched a movie “History of Violence”. About 1am MEL time, the movie finished and I went down to the washroom to change into a First Class “Oversuit” I had retained from previous travel. Went to the self-serve bar and grabbed a cleansing VB as a nightcap, then back to my seat and sleep, managing a good three hours before waking up.
I got my laptop out and started on this report. I was quite tired and was finding it difficult to concentrate so packed it up and went to sleep for another two hours.
The FA’s woke the cabin about 35 minutes before landing at HKG, offering juice, coffee and tea. I planned on sleeping some more so I had some Orange Juice. Quite nice it was as well.
Touching down at Hong Kong the limited views I had outside were of many buildings clouded by a typically ‘thick’ HKG atmosphere and/or condensation on the windows. It took nearly 10 minutes to taxi to our assigned gate.