Review: Qantas Economy Class from Sydney to Auckland

Flying from Sydney to Auckland takes around three hours and it is perfectly comfortable to travel in Economy Class. I burned some of my British Airways Avios in order to book the flight.

International Economy Class on Qantas features on demand entertainment, complimentary meals and drinks. Let’s have a look at what the service down the back on this flight is like.

QF141 – Sydney to Auckland (SYD-AKL)
11 September 2017
Boeing 737-838 – VH-XZE – “Pine Creek”
Seat: Economy Class 4A
Departure: 07:10 Arrival: 12:20

Before flight I selected seat 4A. These seats are reserved for Qantas Platinum or oneworld Emerald frequent flyers. Once I dropped back to oneworld Sapphire, my seat selection remained the same which I am pleased about.

Check in took a little while as I am doing five flights on three separate tickets. Through check is permitted in this instance as some flights were award tickets. Boarding is schedule for 06:25 and it started closer to 06:40.

Economy Class Comfort

The reason seats in row 4 are held for high level frequent flyers is due to the location. They are directly behind Business Class and feature much more leg room than the standard seats.

Window seats are best as the seat supports and entertainment boxes restrict room a little for the other passengers. Boarding is completed swiftly enough as this is a Boeing 737 and then it’s time for the safety demonstration and off into the air.

Economy Class Breakfast

Once in the air, landing cards for New Zealand are distributed to those who need them. At 07:54 Sydney time the crew arrived and offered two choices for breakfast. These are scrambled eggs and bacon or yoghurt and muesli. I chose the hot option.

Qantas serve the meals in a box and with plastic cutlery which presumably saves on costs. I think they could stretch to real metal cutlery in Economy Class. The plastic comes across as pretty cheap though the utensils are quite sturdy.

I am happy to report the breakfast is delicious. Everything is cooked quite well and the tomato based sauce really complimented the other items.

The person beside me chose the yoghurt and muesli which is a pot of each in the box. It looked perfectly fine as well. The crew offered drinks and I selected water. Boxes were collected at 08:30 and the crew did a water run about 10 minutes later.

Entertainment

Personal televisions are available for all passengers and there is a great selection of movies on offer. On this flight I decided to watch Alien Covenant.

The headphones are not noise cancelling which meant I could not hear some parts of the movie. A minor irritation and pretty standard as Economy Class never gets the better quality headphones.

Overall Thoughts

Flying with Qantas in Economy Class is perfectly fine. The cabin crew are not as friendly as when you fly in Business Class, giving only perfunctory politeness. This is due to the fact there are many more people to get through serving on a short enough flight.

Entertainment and food are both very good indeed with the former having quite a large selection of new release movies. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland via Wikimedia Commons.