[Chutzpahflyer]

Hello Summerfly. I did LHR-Sydney on Qatar via Doha a month ago. Highly recommend this airline and airport, especially for J.
Be warned though: 10 days after my return I got a DVT – not nice! I then learned that flight socks should be discarded after only a few wears or 6 months. I didn’t know that so wore my old pair – useless!

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summerfly

[AMcWhirter]

@Mike Tucker

I hear what you say Mike but maybe Qantas considers Manila-Christchurch to be ‘regional’.

One would surely expect higher standards on those really long-haul Qantas flights linking Australia with Europe or the US.

[cwoodward]

Eight hours plus ‘regional’?
Is that not something of a stretch even for the Qantas fantasy marketing machine ?

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AMcWhirter

[summerfly]

Hello Chutzpahflyer. Thanks for sharing this. I hope you recovered well. I usually wouldn’t wear flight socks but for ultra longhaul flights they might be necessary even in J. I will definitely purchase some ahead of this trip. Always good to hear from other people’s experiences. Thank you.

[AMcWhirter]

I hear what you say cwoodward.

Some years ago one reader complained about the shortage of catering SQ provided to J pax on its SIN-SYD route (which is actually further than LON-NYC).

SQ told me it’s because it considers (all of) Australia to be a “regional” destination and its onboard catering reflects that fact.

Am not sure there’s been any changes.

Certainly at that time I did call CX in HKG and the PR told me that CX considers Australia as long-haul and not regional.

[JamesTC]

With Domestic Australia flights taking up to 5/6 hours, I guess 8 hours is ‘regional’ in Qantas’ book….

The problem seems to be with inconsistency of product. Some of their A330’s are getting on a bit, but more importantly is whether they’ve been refurbed with the latest product or not. I suspect that they put their aircraft with the oldest product (angled 2+2+2 seats in Business Class, old IFE etc) on lower yield routes like Manila, and refurbed ones on higher yield, prestige routes like Singapore. (although A380’s and 787’s do most of the heavy lifting on these routes)

Some of Qantas’ A330’s are used mainly for domestic routes and are set up with more Economy seats, but they can also be used on International routes.

[cwoodward]

It is a very small minority of flights – perhaps less than 5 % that take anything like 5-6 hours.
The very vast majority take 2-3 hours or less.
Your analogy re Manila flights seems at first pass logical but is not the case as ALL 26 Qantas A330s are ‘are getting on a bit’ with an average age of 18 and some well over 20. All I believe have been ‘refurbed’ to some degree.

Still very much so Alex AU is defiantly considered long-haul by Cathay. One of our sons who had been flight training for Cathay flew back on Tuesday evening ex Melbourne on a A350-1000 and mentioned that the new catering was excellent – and he is normally unreasonably critical of Cathay’s food offerings.

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AMcWhirter

[GrahamM]

I flew LHR-SYD-AKL on QF first as far as SYD and J on to AKL. Transit in SIN (QF stops there) is good but you need to go through the statutory hand luggage check on reboarding. I found this easy. I’d recommend this routing.

[Author]

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