A few years ago, I decided to stop flying Qantas between Melbourne and Canberra – my most frequent route – because I was tired of the Boeing 717s. The aircraft themselves weren’t bad, but they were getting old and unreliable. I’ve lost countless hours of my life waiting at the airports in Melbourne and Canberra for delayed Boeing 717 flights.

That’s why I was delighted to see that Melbourne-Canberra was the first QantasLink Airbus A220 route. I’d flown on an A220 before (with SWISS) and was very impressed, so I was looking forward to trying out Qantas’ new regional jet.

Now that I have, I can honestly say that QantasLink’s Airbus A220-300 was a delight to fly on – even in Economy Class.

Flight Details

Flight number	QF1286
Route	Melbourne (MEL) to Canberra (CBR)
Aircraft type	Airbus A220-300
Class of travel	Economy
Seat number	28F
On-time performance	We arrived on time
Star rating

The route

Flight Cost

I paid $169 for a one-way Economy Red e-Deal ticket from Melbourne to Canberra.

If you’d prefer to redeem Qantas Frequent Flyer points, there’s also plenty of Classic Flight Reward availability on this route. An Economy ticket would cost 8,000 Qantas Points + $68 in taxes & carrier charges.

To be clear, I paid for this ticket myself. I did not get a freebie from Qantas to tell you how great their new plane is.

Airport Experience

The Qantas domestic terminal at Melbourne Airport wasn’t busy when I arrived around 7pm. I headed over to one of the self-service kiosks to print my bag tag and dropped my checked luggage. It then took about a minute to clear security.

Unfortunately, I can’t give Qantas five stars for the airport experience because priority boarding was a fail.

Qantas advertises priority boarding as a benefit if you’re in Business or have Platinum One, Platinum or Gold status (as I do). At gate 24, there was a clearly marked priority boarding lane and the gate agent even announced that boarding would start with priority boarding via the left lane. So far, so good.

There were two gate agents scanning boarding passes. After processing around three people from the priority queue, the staff member on the right hand side asked her colleague if she should continue taking passengers from the (very long) priority queue until that cleared. Her colleague replied “no, we’ll just board both lines together”, so she then started boarding the general queue while there were still dozens of people waiting in the priority line. As a result, those at the back of the priority queue were among the very last to board.

This is not how priority boarding is supposed to work. I’m disappointed that Qantas still can’t get priority boarding right after so many attempts to fix this. That said, Qantas is about to overhaul its boarding procedures by adding numbered boarding groups – hopefully that makes a difference.

Thankfully, things got better once I boarded the plane!

The Hard Product

The QantasLink A220 has 10 Business Class seats at the front of the plane and 127 Economy seats. Economy is in a lovely 2-3 configuration, which is the same as the Boeing 717 except that the seats are slightly wider – and they really do feel more spacious.

Perhaps it was my imagination, or perhaps it was the pre-reclined seat design – but I felt like the A220 had more legroom than the 717 as well. I’m quite tall and did not feel cramped in my seat.

I wasn’t even sitting in one of the 20 (yes, twenty!) extra legroom seats available on the QantasLink A220. Qantas normally charges $35 to pre-select one of those seats on the Melbourne-Canberra route, unless you have Platinum One status. But anyone can nab one of the remaining seats for free after checking in online, within 24 hours of departure.

I could have done that on this flight, but since I was reviewing it, I wanted to choose a normal seat. In fact, I deliberately selected a seat in the very last row.

For anyone who’s wondering, there is a wall behind the last row of Economy on both sides of the plane – but you can still fully recline your seat.

The QantasLink A220 Economy seats are covered in a grey cloth material, which actually felt slightly rough, but I found the seat otherwise comfortable and well padded. There’s also a fully adjustable headrest.

There’s a USB and USB-C charging outlet on the back of the seat in front, as well as a universal power socket between the seats. (Each pair of seats shares one powerpoint.)

It’s probably a good thing that there are so many charging options, as you need to stream the in-flight entertainment to your own device.

There are no seat-back screens on this aircraft. But you can stream movies and TV shows using the Qantas Entertainment app. There’s also free, fast Wi-Fi which worked very well. This is a big improvement over QantasLink’s Boeing 717s (and Embraer E190s) which have no Wi-Fi, and often no functional entertainment either.

There was a Qantas Magazine in the literature pocket and a small fold-out table just above the main tray table that you could rest your smartphone on while watching movies.

The Qantas Airbus A220-300 itself is excellent. It has large windows, pleasant mood lighting and is quieter than the Boeing 717 – especially when sitting at the back of the plane.

The overhead lockers are noticeably large. You could fit quite a lot in those! The two bathrooms at the back of Economy Class – built into the back of the plane, behind the galley – are also relatively spacious as far as aircraft lavatories go.

Overall, the plane feels modern, clean and new. That’s probably because it is new – it entered service for QantasLink in March 2024.

The only part of the plane that didn’t seem new was my seat pocket. Somehow, this already had stains on it.

The Soft Product

There were three QantasLink flight attendants working on the Airbus A220 – a cabin supervisor who looked after Business, and two other crew members who served Economy.

The smiling cabin crew offered complimentary drinks and refreshments during the 46-minute flight. A full selection of cold drinks was available including red and white wine, beer, juice, soft drinks and water. The snack was a pack of cheese, crackers and salami slices. I thought this was totally appropriate given the flight time.

In case you’re wondering, these were the contents of the snack pack:

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.