Just a quick wrap up of this; thanks for the replies while I was waiting for flights during the day.
A day trip with 3 goals in mind: a flight on the Virgin Blue E190, a flight on Australia's newest low coast carrier Tiger Airways and a flight on Jetstar's newest aircraft to its fleet the A321. My biggest worry was with Tiger Airways as they can be late or cancel the flight altogether. Things didn't go quite as planned.
Virgin Blue
DJ1212 BNE-CBR
737-700 VH-VBC
9:15AM 11:00
Usual DJ flight; on time; and fairly full flight nice to have a spare middle seat and the PTV so you could watch your progress on airshow.
Tiger Airways
TT517 CBR-MEL
A320 VH-VNF
1:55PM 3:00PM
The service on this flight is like all LCC BOB
The aircraft was clean and the flight was more than half full. This aircraft was a recent addition to the fleet and it had the new
Airbus interior. I couldn't really tell the difference. It didn't have the new car smell interior so it wasn't that new.
Tiger Airways have their own terminal in Melbourne well more appropriately called a shed. Deplaning was via stairs and then a long
undercover walk way to the building(shed). It resembled a tin shed that was put over a once used car park complete with the car park linings which were still visible.
Only passengers could be inside the baggage claim area as there was a wire fence around the front of the roof. You had to go through one of those turnstiles to get outside, probably a good idea so that people off the street could not come and steal your luggage but not so good if you are meeting an old person who has just arrived into Melbourne.
Jetstar Airways
JQ448 MEL-OOL
A321 VH-VWZ
6:30PM 8:25PM
A nice long walk from the Tiger Airways terminal to the other side of Melbourne airport to where the Jetstar check in area which took about 15 minutes, I guess its unlikely for any passengers to fly on Tiger and Jetstar on the same day making a connection in Melbourne.
I checked in at one of the self check machines and received a boarding pass for 28D and after looking at the seat map which showed back to row 35 Jetstar had scheduled an A321, then went and hung out in the Qantas lounge in Melbourne.
Boarding was on time; and our gate was right next to QF634 flight going to Brisbane, I was on that flight a week earlier on another pointless F lounge run.
I always wonder that with terminals as the planes get bigger then the boarding areas get more crammed with people and this seemed pretty evident tonight.
Flight left a few minutes late I guess with a bigger aircraft then it requires a bit more time to get all the passengers onboard. Once the aircraft leveled out the cabin crew offered me a seat on the last row with chance for
photo opportunity.
The aircraft was fitted with IFE but for some reason was not working properly. Service was again BOB, but you all knew that already.
I caught a taxi to the train then a 30 minute train trip to Beenleigh. For those that live in Brisbane, Logan City or Redlands then its not really convenient to use Gold Coast Airport, even to save a few dollars.
Would I do another pointless trip like this again? Maybe but not for a while, I was really disappointed that Virgin Blue changed from the scheduled E190 to the 737-700 and once I had checked in there was no way I could change to the earlier flight, really puts a dampener on the whole day when something like that happens
nb: blue means link to another picture.
