Sydney, Australia: Cairns (CNS) to Sydney (SYD)

QF921 29FEB08 Cairns International Cairns Australia (CNS) to Sydney International, Sydney Australia (SYD) 5:45a 9:45a 734 VH-TFJ

Flying Time: 2:20

I gave the agent my boarding pass and she slid it through the gate reader with a good day and a smile. She returned it to me and I continued, passing a bin with headsets so I picked one up. I continued walking down a long angled jetway to the waiting Boeing 737-400 airplane; been a while since I flew one of these.

As I boarded, I noticed that the Captain is a female. As I entered the plane, I was greeted by the flight attendant who inspected my boarding card and advised me that my seat was on the left. I made my way down this single aisle airplane with its five rows of Business Class cloth seats (the first three with a 2-2 config. and the other two at 3-3, but the middle seats' handled folds in) and then Economy class in a 3-3 configuration. There was no divider between the cabins.

There were two monitors on the walls before each side of the cabin as well as overhead.

The boarding process continued for this nearly full flight. Just before the doors closed, I was able to switch to the aisle across from me as there was no one else boarding. The lady who was there had moved to the window seat.

We pushed back at 5:48a and headed for the runway as the safety demo was done manually. Takeoff was swift at 5:51a as there was no one else using the runway at that time; two flights to Brisbane had just left.
It incredible that as soon as we broke the cloud, it was light out as the sun had already risen quite a bit; odd...

"The Invasion" with Nicole Kiddman started on the overhead. The flight attendant came through with headsets, just in case people did not pick them up on the way in.

I had to do a bathroom break and while there, the female captain came on the PA and welcomed u on board and said that we were at our cruising altitude of 32,000’. She introduced her first officer and advised that he was flying us to Sydney today. She also added that we should arrive about 10 minutes early and that the local temp will get to a high of 19/20C and there are rain showers in the area. She also advised that Sydney was an hour later and it was now 7:13a there and gave our flying time of 2:20 today.

Back at my seat, the flight attendants then passed through the cabin with breakfast on their way towards the front of the plane; the movie played on.

At 6:23a, breakfast arrived at my row; I moved my computer away to make room for it and the flight attendant said, “I see you made room for some brekkie” in a lovely Australian accent, yes, I added smiling. It was a bottle of fruit frusion (pineapple, orange and mango juice) with a bag of sliced green apples, a tub of Special K cereal, 100% pure full cream milk and a tea cup a little thing of milk in it and finally a warm raisin roll. There was also a packet with plastic utensils plus a stirrer and a packet of sugar.

Coffee and tea followed, then once they were cleaning up, they offered a bottle of water and more coffee and tea also followed.

I fell asleep after the movie finished and when I awoke, we were served water and Apricot and pecan muesli biscuit at at about 8:54a.

At 8:57a, the First Officer came on the PA and announced that we would start our descent in a bit and that we would be in a holding pattern before still landing ten minutes after schedule. The descent started right after he finished.

We touched down with a double bounce at 9:25a as promised.