B737-800 Qantas

[Coleman John]

Nothingreally exciting happened at the airport, so I'm not gonna share the experience. Boarding commenced at around 8:30 starting with business class passengers and OneWorld status members. After that came economy.

Qantas B737-800's have 174 seats in total. There are 12 recliner style business class seats split in 3 rows at the front. Behind that there is 162 economy class seats. Economy class seats have a width of 17.2" and a pitch of 30", which may be on the slightly tighter side.

Here is a look at the business class seats. As mentioned, there are 12 seats layed out in 3 rows in a 2-2 configuration. In terms of width and pitch, they are very similar to the US's domestic first. They offer a pitch of 37" and a width of 22".

And here is a look at the economy seats. I like the design and they are rather comfy in my opinion. Each seat has adjustable headrests, an IFE screen along with a USB port right next to that. Below that there is a tray table and a seat pocket underneath that. Legroom is quite tight, but the seat has nice padding along with a descent recline.

Since this was a descently long flight for a domestic flight, inflight service didn't start until around an hour from take off. That being said, I decided to look at the IFE scren at my seay. The seatback IFE screen had a descent amount of movies and tv shows sufficient for a domestic flight. However with the plane being a decade or so old, the screen had the worst response out any IFE screen I have ever seen.

For the meal options in economy class, there were only 1 and it was this hot meal box with a drink. In terms of drink, Qantas serves alcoholic drinks on flights departing from 12pm everyday, and flights departing from 9am that are longer than two and a half hours. My flight was a morning flight before 9, so there were none on my flight. However there were a nice variety of soft drinks and I opted for a lemonade.

In terms of the meal box it was really tasty and quite filling. It's nice how qantas offers stuff like this on long domestic flights, but that was the extent of the service and I did want to see more offered.

All of Qantas's domestic planes are fitted with Wi-Fi and I made good use of the that and watched videos on YouTube for most of the flight. I never really used the IFE screen because of the laggy response, but I did use it to see the flight map. By the way, the Wi-Fi is FREE and really fast. Videos rarely buffered on YouTube.

This domestic flight with Qantas did not disappoint! The experience was really comfortable and I had no issues or complaints. The seats were really comfortable and still stand strong even though they are a decade or so old. In terms of catering, everything was delicious despite the portions being on the smaller side. Can't forget about the cabin crew too, they made the expereince a lot better.

Putting all these positive aspects from my flight and comparing many negative reviews of Qantas, I can say Qantas's domestic flights can be rather controversial. Your flight could end up great like mine or could be the biggest mishap. You never really know when flights are gonna delay or cancel, but the soft product might make up for it. I would recommend Qantas over VA (Virgin Australia), but that's up to you. If your seeking cheaper options, go with Jetstar as their hard and soft product isn't that bad. Rex and Bonza may be interesting airlines to try out too!

Qantas installed leather recliner seats across the 737 fleet a few years ago. The seats are quite comfortable to sit in, with 22 inches of width and 37 inches of pitch (i.e. the distance from seat back to seat back). They are not lie-flat, however.

No entainment even though my qantas app said there were a selection of films. Foot rest not working in fact nothing working. Food I could not eat it was awful. Bread and butter and chocolate bar was OK. A drop down screen I could not see or hear was dreadful.i had to change my booking for 3 days later and qantas had the cheek to charge me 1409 dollars

Row 4 also ensures you're among the very first passengers off the plane: ideal if you're flying only with hand luggage, as you can skip the baggage carousel and head straight to your waiting taxi or Uber.

Long-legged travellers will naturally want to land one of these seats, as the seat pitch (that's the measurement from one part of a seat, to the same location of the seat in front) is a very generous 38 inches, compared to the more typical 30-31 inches.

Row 14 is the pick of the bunch, as these seats can be reclined whenever allowed during the flight. Seats in row 13 (and row 12 in front) can also recline, but are 'locked' during take-off and landing, and sometimes it's necessary to ask the crew to 'unlock' the recline feature.

If you use a laptop or other large devices inflight, there's also the inconvenience of having to retrieve your gadgets after the seatbelt sign is off and return them to the locker prior to landing, as laptops can't be stored in the seatback pockets, and your laptop bag can't be by your feet.

Seat selection is free on Qantas domestic flights for all fare types, except for the emergency exit rows, although your Qantas Frequent Flyer status plays a part in what seats you can initially select.

For example, Platinum One members will be shown the plane's entire seat map (that's how they can unlock the prized row 4), while Gold and Silver members are shown a seat map with some prized spots marked as unavailable.

I have a hunch that the T+80 trick may no longer work. I've been following that AusBT tip with some success, but over the last 3-4 weeks, Row 4 has remained blocked out every time.(I'm platinum.)It could just be bad luck, as that's only been across four or so flights in that time and they could all have simply been P1-heavy flights, but I do wonder whether the system now remains blocked for P1 only beyond T+80...

When I was doing the MEL BNE I found any Chairman or P1 will be booked to Row 4 first, and get their upgrades allocated ... best hope for me (gold) was always ask at desk as they move up you have a reasonable chance on the day

I recently scored row 4 on a trip from Sydney, Brissy to Port Moresby and yep...I had A LOT more legroom than the biz class passengers. It's weird that they haven't used this space at row 4 to extended the biz class seats to give more space there?

As a Perth based Plat flyer the influx of 737s in the last couple of years on EW routes has been disappointing, ex MEL and BRI esp. Gimme a 330 instead of free WiFi any day. In fact, give us free WiFi on 330s for the best of both worlds.However seats 4C&D are the best among a bery bad bunch on a 737 for a 3-5 hour flight.Agree the 80 hour thing seems to be drifting towards 48 or 36 hours. Has their been a change in policy?

On the international short haul to NZ I was able to choose row 4 at any time, after moving from gold to platinum. Before that, as gold I was able to choose up to row 6. On the domestic, I'm able to choose up to row 6. The qantas premium call centre said that I would see row 4 open up at 48 hours and four seats were free, but it's currently 40 now, and there are no changes. It's only a short flight from bne to Syd but on the way back it'll be the third flight from central Africa and some room would be nice. We'll see!

Interesting to note that on my recent flights 4 A B C have a sign over them stating CREW USE ONLY, despite being able to select them, I was bumped the first time out of there and the second flight I chose D E F and it was not a problem and no sign over the seats. Does anyone know why?

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