How do you know if Qantas domestic will allow rear door offboarding?

[juzdownunder]

I'm curious if there's any 'hard and fast' rule as to whether Qantas will be allowing (or not) boarding/offboarding via the rear of their aircraft on domestic flights?

I'm travelling more regularly these days MEL-BNE, a few days at a time and with carry-on luggage only...so I often try to get a seat as far forward as possible to allow for a quick exit on arrival into BNE (or MEL for the return). But I have no status so often the furthest forward I can get is the middle of the plane...and the last few times Qantas have both boarded and off-boarded via the rear doors...so I end up being in the worst spot possible.

I'm quite happy to choose an aisle seat in one of the back few rows of the plane if I know Qantas will always be letting me off via the rear doors...is it an 'always' thing, or dependent on something like weather, arrival gate or other factors? I'm sure it'll be just my luck to choose 2nd back row on my next flight only to arrive and be told we're all off via the front door only....

 

[markis10]

Wet weather is a no

 

[Harrison_133]

I'm quite happy to choose an aisle seat in one of the back few rows of the plane if I know Qantas will always be letting me off via the rear doors...is it an 'always' thing, or dependent on something like weather, arrival gate or other factors? I'm sure it'll be just my luck to choose 2nd back row on my next flight only to arrive and be told we're all off via the front door only....

In MEL T1 at least, not all gates are set up to enable rear door boarding, so it's purely down to luck.

 

[BenP]

I overheard one of the FA talking about it recently and the main thing is they need someone on the ground to actually do it - bring out the stairs and the tape barrier thing as they were watching for it as well (I know this is pretty obvious)

 

[juzdownunder]

Thanks for the replies, seems it is completely unpredictable, bugger.

 

[Forg]

Wet weather is a no

I very confidently stated this about BNE about 5yrs ago, based on circa-2010 experiences with QF (when they NEVER used the rear stairs regardless of weather - which had me flying VA where the 2nd-last row was always available when I was booking flights a few days before travel), so of course they went to all the trouble of wheeling the stairs to the back exit in the rain just to make me look bad!!

I think that while it's not 100% a given, you can see patterns if you're traveling regularly within a short-ish time-span and between the same two airports. The aforementioned circa-2010 travel was for a project my employer was running in Brisbane, I flew SYD-BNE & return at irregular intervals about 10 times over a year, and for both QF & VA the use (or not-use) of the rear stairs was very consistent.

 

[elanshin]

I'm travelling more regularly these days MEL-BNE, a few days at a time and with carry-on luggage only...so I often try to get a seat as far forward as possible to allow for a quick exit on arrival into BNE (or MEL for the return). But I have no status so often the furthest forward I can get is the middle of the plane...and the last few times Qantas have both boarded and off-boarded via the rear doors...so I end up being in the worst spot possible.

Set alarms for T-80 and T-24. The T-80 trick still works where almost all seats open up which means row 4-9 is now open too. 4 being a paid row.

Since only P1 can select 4/5 prior to T-80 there's a very high chance that row 5 is available around T80.

At T-24 you can check in and every available seat will be selectable once you check in.

 

[juzdownunder]

Set alarms for T-80 and T-24. The T-80 trick still works where almost all seats open up which means row 4-9 is now open too. 4 being a paid row.

Since only P1 can select 4/5 prior to T-80 there's a very high chance that row 5 is available around T80.

At T-24 you can check in and every available seat will be selectable once you check in.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the T-80 trick, will do.

 

[Big John]

This might help in calculating T-80 : Qantas T-80 Calculator