Editorial Review

Qantas exit row a happy option to New Zealand

8 / 10

27 November, 2018

Airline Ratings

Airline Ratings

Cabin

Economy Class

Route Flown

Sydney

Queenstown

Sydney

Seating

4 / 5

The seat came equipped with a touchscreen inflight entertainment system, a USB charging port and was relatively comfortable with an adjustable headrest. There was nobody in the seat next to me between Sydney and Queenstown but the limitations of the 17.2-inch width became apparent with somebody sitting in the seat on the way back.
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Plenty of room in these seats. Photos: Steve Creedy.
SeatGuru says Qantas now has a 30-inch seat pitch in standard economy on its 737s but buying an exit row allowed me to avoid that. Not feeling like you’re being progressively knee-capped makes the world a sunnier place. The battery on my ageing Samsung was down to 10 percent and had recovered to 62 percent after about three hours connected to the USB port.

Customer Service

4 / 5

The staff were friendly and efficient. There seemed to be a few Kiwi accents and I saw Jet Connect on badges. I was impressed when the flight attendant who helped me with me temporarily indisposed IFE offered to get me a drink while I  waited for it to reboot. As befitting one of the world’s safest airlines, they were diligent about safety. I was told to unplug my phone during take-off and another passenger was asked to put their shoes on.

Catering

4 / 5

I later learned you could choose a meal before you fly but I don't remember seeing that on the Qantas website. Breakfast was good and would not have been out of place in premium economy. There was choice a spinach and herb frittata with bacon and kale or a fruit platter. I chose the frittata, which came with bacon, a sausage and potatoes. There was also juice, a mini-muffin and a mango yoghurt with crunchy granola stuff.
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A decent breakfast was welcome.
On the way home, it was a tasty beef curry with vegies and a pre-buttered bread roll. This was followed by a Tip Top ice-cream bar and a Whitakkers chocolates Drinks were complimentary and it was a full bar that included spirits. A couple of drinkable reds helped wash down the curry.
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Lunch on the way home.

Inflight Entertainment

4 / 5

Qantas gives you a set of half-way reasonable over-the-ear headphones but they are not noise-canceling and quite a few in the economy cabin had brought their own.
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Quite a few people brought their own headphones.
However, you can use the supplied gear if necessary. The Q Entertainment system is one of the better offerings – when it works. I’ve had problems with headphone sockets on recent flights and the flight to Queenstown was no exception. You could get it to work properly if you jiggled it the jack and held it in place. Some sort of software problem caused the sound to drop out on the way back and it had to be rebooted. There is a good selection of recent movies, TV series and audio podcasts and radio.

Extra Information

It  was a pleasant experience in both directions  with a few extras that I didn’t necessarily expect in these days of airline Grinches. That was probably as much a result of economy class expectations that have too often been lowered into a dungeon of despair but it was a nice surprise nonetheless. Steve Creedy paid for these flights.

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