Aussie Trip Part 3: Qantas Link – An interesting regional flight experience and I miss these B717s!
After a rather disappointing start to my Australia trips, things finally showed a sign of recovery. I was looking forward to this trip on Qantas Link operated by National Jet System/Cobham Aviation, which is my 201st airline.
Most importantly, Qantas Link operates a fleet of Boeing 717-200s, which were no longer that easy to fly on. Delta will soon be the only US airline with Boeing 717s. I was also exciting about finally visiting Uluru, which was the main attraction of the trip. I am sure some of you will find this routing strange. What you are going to Uluru, but why are you flying to Alice Springs via Uluru? Well Yalara, the closest town to Uluru, has a number of resorts, but the prices are rather high and I don’t want to stay at the lower end of the five resorts featured here. Plus the tour itself will not be much cheaper than departure from Alice Springs. Of course the drive from Alice Springs to Uluru was torturous, but Alice Springs is a better alternative for the price of accommodation, especially I can stay at a Hilton family hotel with an affordable price. Anyway, I accidentally add my Uluru photo album to this album, so you are free to look at them too. I definitely enjoyed the day trip to Uluru.
September 21, 2014
QF 1851 CNS-AYQ Lv0725 Arr0950 Boeing 717-200 VH-NXE
Cairns Airport was already fairly busy on this Sunday morning with a number of morning Jetstar flights and the G20 summit, and Qantas check-in area was thankfully fairly quiet, as the first departure was not until 6:55am. The domestic terminal at Cairns is actually quite nice with a fair number of eateries, shops, and sitting area. Both Qantas and Virgin Australia offer lounges for their premium and elite passengers.
Japanese sign
Flight Information
Qantas Club Cairns – still closed when I arrived and did not open till 5:55am.
It was a really nice spacious lounge but Qantas has a major operation here. The décor was pretty standard Qantas style and here were a few pictures here and there:
Breakfast spread – typical fruit, cereal, museli, yogurt, cold cut, breads, and pancakes
Children Area
What I like was the apron view – there were actually some interesting activities, but it was too dark for any pictures to come out great. But I spotted the morning Cathay Pacific flight to Brisbane, as well as the arrival of Jetstar’s Dreamiiner VH-VKE arriving from Narita. To my surprise, Qantas flight 24 from Bangkok to Sydney was diverted to Cairns in the morning, and VH-QPE was stuck here for an hour, while offloading a drunken passenger, who was trying to steal liquors. He was being handcuffed by under-cover agents, and was off loaded at Cairns with a court date later this week.
Our flight to Connellan airport at Ayers Rock was lightly loaded this morning, and the flight was mainly vacationers from both Australia and Japan. I think it was 30% full. Boarding began at 7:04am and it involves a nice walk to the tarmac. I loved it and took the chances to shoot these pictures.
Virgin Australia VH-ZPD E190 to Brisbane
Qantas Link Boeing 717-200 VH-NXN
Qantas Link Boeing 717-200 VH-NXE – taking me to Uluru and Alice Springs
A few cabin shot of this all economy class Boeing 717 – 125 passengers in total
Back of seat with two literature pockets
My seat this morning was 16F, which was the exit row seat. I noticed that both QF and VA did a very elaborate safety briefing for exit row passengers. I was eventually joined by another passenger at 16D and middle seat was left vacant.
I spotted this Dash-8 just before we pushed back.
Due to the G20 Summits, there were some interesting planes in the tarmac.
Door was closed at 7:18am and we pushed back a minute later. We took off from R/W15 at 7:28am.






















































