Christmas 2007 Trip: Sydney to Cairns

6 QF167 9:05a 11:15a Sydney, Australia (SYD) to Cairns, Australia (CNS) 763 VH-OGT

I figured that the person sitting in my seat was upgraded and the new seat was not yet assigned. I’ve done this to many times, I internalized… He told me to wait just outside the door and entered the airplane. In a few minutes he returned and got on the phone and called his colleague; looked like I was right, so he went to advise the lady who was sitting there. In the interim, the purser said hello to me and we struck up a conversation. I told him about my itinerary and he said; hey, we’re going to Tokyo why don’t you continue on with us. I told him that I was purposely taking the long way and he laughed. They were heading onto to Tokyo with a 1:40 minutes or so ground time in Cairns. The layover in Tokyo would be about 25 hours.

By now the agent had returned saying my seat was now empty. I said thanks for chatting and good by for now and headed to my seat.

The Business Class cabin on this Boeing 767-300ER is configured as a 1-2-2; it is always interesting to see how each airline configure the premium cabin of the Boeing 767s. Economy class was the standard 2-3-2 configuration with the cabin in two compartments. This one is much different from ANA’s as the aircraft has two Exit forward of the wing as opposed to ANA’s two exits over the wing. Qantas also uses a coat closet to divide the cabins and ANA’s does not.

I settled into my seat saying hello to the lady who seems to be sitting with her husband. I managed to stuff my bag in the middle overhead bin as the side ones that are taller were all full.

The purser came on and explained our delay saying that we were waiting on some paperwork. The Captain also explained the delay and apologized for it. He also gave some updated information on our journey today. Cairns was 26C with rain and we would arrive at 11:05a. in addition, Cairns is an hour behind Sydney. So, I wonder what I will do in rainy Cairns…

The safety demo started and it was funny to see the word “aeroplane” being used in a sentence. The demo was in English with subtitles for the hearing impaired.

We eventually departed at 9:27a and headed out to the runway. As we pushed back, I noticed a LAN Airlines Airbus A340-300 at the gate (CC-CQA), that is a nice flight from Santiago, Chile (SCL), umm… There was also a Cathay Pacific A340 taxiing around, OneWorld alliance at work, I thought.

I remember seeing the tower on our way out, but the next thing I remember is seeing the flight attendants in the aisle with breakfast; I must have dosed off.

A 250ml bottle Fruit Frusion (pineapple, orange and mango juice), Kellogg’s Sultana Bran Crunch with milk, a warm raisin bread with butter and a yoghurt was served immediately after takeoff; that was an excellent breakfast. On the main screen there was some Qantas promotional items and then the “Simpson’s Movie” started with 2:17 to go.

Tea and coffee was served immediately after and the clean up came about 10 to 15 minutes later. I got up and used the lavatory and also looked for the magazines that were missing from my seat pocket. I was able to find the Duty free one and the missing December 2007 Australian Way inflight magazine; which was almost as thick as the one from ANA. The one from Singapore Airlines was quite thick as well. I did also find “Travel + Leisure” the Australian edition among many other titles.

I sat back down and started doing some typing and fell asleep; when I awoke, they were serving some water in a bottle and a muselix in a packet which seemed like a crowd pleaser, but I declined to eat it.

I also watched a video about Cairns and decied that I would try to see the rainforest when I got there.

We landed in a few minutes a little delayed but not by much. We were instructed to ensure that we had the boarding pass with the "D" on it if were exiting in Cairns; some people did not have it and had to go find it onboard. Sucks to be them I guess.