SYD-BNE, Wednesday 1st June, dinner flight on 737:
This day was a total mess at Sydney airport due to the heavy winds and only one runway (the “cross” runway going at a 90 degrees angle from the two standard runways) open. As per usual, the food in the Sydney business lounge was absolutely atrocious (especially that weird chicken dish which contained the most disgusting off cuts of chicken carcasses one can imagine) but at least the toastie machine was back to save me. Let me not even start moaning about the state of those loos in that lounge, Qantas should be seriously ashamed of it but I digress. In the end and after numerous delays, we finally got airborne about 90 late. No pre-departure drinks of course and further delays up in the air due to (relatively strong) turbulence.
We were already past Newcastle when the crew was finally allowed to start preparing the service. They kept both J class crew members up the front the entire flight and, almost surprisingly, they managed to get everyone a meal AND two wine top ups. Mind you, both ladies were very senior in every sense of the word so they knew what they’re doing. Maybe not the warmest of services but as I keep saying- if, science forbid, anything was ever to “happen” to one of the planes I’m on, I’d always prefer one of those older experienced Qantas crew to get me to safety than one of those Virgin clowns (yea, all the usual Virgin fanboys can now kick and scream at me if they like
).
Food options were, to my and it seemed everyone else’s delight, a proper beef lasagna or the usual repetitive salad. Needless to say, as everyone else in the cabin, I selected the lasagna and had a glass of the Grant Burge Shiraz. It’s a reliable supermarket brand I’d say, nothing to write home about and certainly not endangering Qantas to run bankrupt over it but tasty enough. Exactly the same can be said about the lasagna, the three mini pebbles of “beef” won’t break the bank but it tasted good enough.
The lasagna came with beans and carrots which both are perfectly fine vegetables in my mind. Unfortunately (and strangely enough), the yummie Béchamel was loaded with steamed spinach and as we all know, spinach is simply EVIL (as are rocket and, aaargh, Kale). It looked odd and kinda killed the taste. It certainly did not help with the health factor as I had to indulge in the Lindt bar afterwards to get that spinach taste out of my mouth, something that I would usually never do as I’m not the biggest fan of chocolate generally (I know, I know! My partner is one lucky man, always getting doubles of chocolate).
All in all a fine flight, especially given the extreme wind in Sydney and resulting delays and bumpiness of this flight which is no one’s fault (or maybe it is- this is not the place for a climate change discussion, obviously). I was filled quite nicely with both wine and food and they got us there safely and very politely. I had much worse so relatively happy with this one.
Its just so pathetic.
