Trip report: BNE to LHR

I’m in a BYD electric car, whizzing my way to the airport. This is the first time in two months for flying, and the first time all year to be flying with Qantas.

Qantas rewards me by sending me a text saying that it is “unable to confirm” my upgrade request for the first leg of the trip. The copywriting on that text needs some work. “Sorry - we can’t confirm an upgrade this time.” would convey the same information, sound a little more hopeful that it could happen in the next leg, and uses the word “sorry”. I read the Joe Aston book about Qantas a month ago, and it’s told me much about the management style of the airline.

The BYD (fun fact - BYD stands for “Bring Your Dog”, because the cars are exceptionally good in the back for smaller animals) is quiet, and the big centre screen is off. It turns out that is a feature in these cars. The full extent of our conversation was “International Terminal?” “Yes.” I spend the time scrolling through social media, but the nice type of social media.

BNE

Brisbane Airport is in the middle of remodelling inside. It’s pretty awful. The Qantas lounge is landside, not airside, while they rebuild an escalator (a process which is likely to take four months), so the joy of X-rays and wondering if your passport will actually scan this time is left until after you’ve been in the lounge. I get given my boarding passes for both flights - no upgrade for the LHR segment either then - and pick my way through the building hoardings and temporary sunglasses shops in the main, crowded, terminal. I decline the opportunity of buying a $3.50 bag of “lollies” for $8.99, and vaguely look at some books that I won’t buy.

BNE-SIN

My twentieth time for this part of the journey. Today, I’m on VH-QPJ Port Stephens for the first time - it’s a twenty year-old Airbus A330. It’s got free wifi (“while over the Australian mainland and when nearing Singapore”). And I’ve got a spare seat next to me, so that’s nice. It’s hard to tell with the A330 but it feels new-ish on board, with large screens and a kind of net thing under the screen for a secret function that is never adequately explained.

Qantas has Coopers Pale Ale on board, which is my usual (even if the brewing company’s ethics are awful). Qantas also has a strange lack of napkins, and no plastic glasses, just paper cups.

The crew is all from New Zealand, where the unions and labour laws are weaker. Qantas - the spirit of Australia.

The wifi is kind of okay. But it’s a Saturday so I’m not working, which is rather refreshing. I watch a fair amount of YouTube on my slightly broken YouTube Premium Lite account, which doesn’t seem to have properly downloaded most of what I had downloaded last night.

We land in Singapore nine minutes early, into rain.

SIN

I have six hours to kill in Singapore, thanks to Qantas’s rather strange schedule from BNE. The rain doesn’t really make me that keen to do a run into the city, which I occasionally do.

I wander round The Jewel, still an awe-inspiring structure. I go down to the Don Don Donki store and happily wander round looking at weird Japanese things. The Don Don Donki jingle plays incessantly as I walk round, which is still going round in my head half an hour after I leave.

I enjoy the usual laksa in the Qantas lounge, which Qantas has failed to enshittify. Vyvyan does not have blue hair. Why no blue hair? I ask. She doesn’t have time to go to the salon, she tells me. Exclusive.

SIN - LHR

I’m on the A380 VH-OQB, for the third time. It’s the fifteenth time I’ve flown this route.

I dimly notice that the in flight video has changed. Like everything else with Qantas, it’s cheaper - electing this time to be filmed in places that Qantas want you to think are owned by Qantas, rather than glamorous places around the world; a dull corporate video run by PR, rather than an aspirational one run by marketing. The Qantas training facility in Longreach is chosen to tell us how to brace in our seats. The Airbus factory is shown, “building our new planes”. A flight simulator is shown, though Qantas sold theirs to someone else, so nobody actually mentions who owns it (Ansett, as it happens). And right at the end, one of the ground staff that Qantas fired illegally during COVID is shown grinning at the camera and hoping we have a great flight, in spite of not working for Qantas at all. This is a ludicrous video, misleading in the extreme, like some form of corporate whitewashing by a company who desperately wants to cover up how much it has cut back in the last ten years in pursuit of profit and shareholder dividends.

Once we take off, I get a Platinum welcome, with someone very excited about me being on the flight. In order to underline this fact, they give me a handwritten note, addressed to a Mr Palmer. Oh.

The crew is all from the UK - where the unions and labour laws are weaker. Qantas - the spirit of Australia.

Giving the dog food dinner a miss - I pity Neil Perry’s dogs, and anyway, I’m full of laksa - I elect to sleep, and wake for breakfast, a kind of frittata thing which isn’t as bad as previous attempts at breakfast.

We land in London, three minutes late.

LHR

My plan here was to quickly jump on the Elizabeth Line, and jettison my bag at my hotel, but no such luck. As I arrive at the station, the train line grinds to a halt, and after fifteen minutes we’re told to use an alternative route.

As three train-fulls of passengers try going up the escalators to leave the station, the elevators also grind to a halt, forming a dangerous crush at the top of one of the escalators and raised voices about the people still being propelled up the escalator - so, for the first time in my life, I hit the emergency stop button. The escalator slowly grinds to a halt (which I’m pleased about), and everyone slowly walks up into the small overcrowded landing. Public safety result.

And so to a busy Piccadilly Line train, with a man talking to himself and swigging from a mostly-consumed whisky bottle. At 8.05am. And then to Paddington, where half the trains are mysteriously cancelled due to “a problem in the depot”. The joys of public transport. I end up going to Not The Right Station and then an Uber which gets me to The Right Place by 12.35pm, five minutes late. My initial plan was to get there at 10.45am and be blissfully early. Good job I built in time to be delayed!

Later

I saw a Banksy - the statue that popped up a month ago. There it is!

My last morning in London, after doing my work, I wander outside and it’s lovely. 26°C. I discover that a day pass on the TfL bikes is just £3.50 so I tootle round London, in an aimless fashion, discovering that Elephant and Castle is much closer to Westminster than I ever thought it was. My Apple Watch happily chuntered to itself, noisily announcing to anyone who wanted to listen that I have closed my ring.

I end up back at LHR, in retrospect a little early. I sit in the Qantas lounge for a bit, then wander round the terminal - it seems to be exclusively run by WHSmith these days, with a big WHSmith, a bookshop (run by WHSmith) and an electronics store (also run by WHSmith). I believe WHSmith doesn’t exist outside of airports these days.

I try to get into the Cathay Pacific lounge (which I’ve reviewed as the best) - and am turned away, so tiptoe into the blissfully quiet BA lounge instead.

LHR-SIN

I’m on Qantas QF2, on VH-OQK - my fourth flight on this aircraft. It’s a quite old-feeling Airbus A380 with little IFE screens. This is the sixteenth time I’ve done this sector. As ever, I’m in economy. The aeroplane is full. When the person in front reclines their seat, I get surprisingly little leg space, but manage to get some sleep anyway.

A half-hearted Platinum welcome with my meal, and I get singled out for an offer of another coffee after the breakfast (which is an odd meal to give you as you land in the late afternoon in Singapore).

I overhear one person saying that they are on standby for the next flight to Sydney. The effects of the little disagreement in the Middle East continues to give airlines much to think about - in Qantas’s case, I can only presume it’s good news, since people are less likely to take an Emirates codeshare right now.

We took off 35 minutes late, and land 21 minutes late (mainly due to a storm in Singapore which gets everyone circling for a bit).

SIN

Peeling off QF2 and walking straight to the lounge, I’m not alone. My goodness, there is a queue to get in. After a little wander round Changi instead, the queue disappears. I wait till the Sydney folk have had their laksa and wonton before doing the same - as well as sampling the “Qantas Sling”, an exciting sweet concoction that is vaguely similar to a Singapore Sling, but which also has an olive on a stick for some reason.

SIN-BNE

Marking a 25% success rate, the upgrade fairies have been good to me, so this last segment is in business. I’m on QF52 VH-EBD Traralgon - a refreshed 23 year-old A330-200 which has wifi, and I gather has iPads in the main cabin (as well as a streaming app for those who prefer their own devices). I last flew on this aeroplane in Mar 2024. This will be my sixteenth flight on this sector.

It’s a short 7 hours 30 minutes (when I lived in London this would be an unacceptably long flight), and I’m full of laksa again.

Since I last flew business, the amenities bag has changed to one branded by RM Williams, and it looks very lovely. In one of my three hotels in London, I managed to leave my wash bag behind, so need a new one and this one looks much more premium than the plastic thing I got last time to celebrate 100 years of Qantas. I will be taking this with me.

A cheese plate is all I have for dinner, accompanied by a chocolate bar (I asked). Then a sleep. Lying down makes all the difference, it really does; and I can begin to see the benefit of business. When the tax system takes half of what you pay yourself from your own company, and takes a large percentage of company profits, I can understand why business class is a thing.

After a decent few hours’ sleep, a not particularly remarkable breakfast and we’re home already - landing twenty minutes early (and remarkably 40 minutes before any other flight), to discover that Brisbane International Airport has got rid of all the machines prior to security that you can use to beat the queue and get your yellow slip of paper early. Now, everyone has to get their yellow slip of paper in the same place. This is not progress.