ahotpoet

I will be on an A380 airbus and am using miles to get my ticket and business class is not available. Everyone I have ever talked to recommends to go business class or better on such a long flight.
Do they give you little amenity kits? What about the meals? Do you have to pay for drinks?
I do not need the legroom because I am short but I was wondering what other comforts can I expect or not expect on this flight.

doug_stallings

You are fed and you get drinks in economy class. Entertainment is free. I don't know about amenity kits, though many airlines are getting rid of them, but I think Qantas still provides them. The A380s are among their newest and full-featured planes. They have, for example, self-serve snackbars so you can eat between meals if you want.

I've never been fortunate enough to fly business class long-haul. I have done premium economy to Australia on Virgin, and it's just fine. That's available on Qantas, so perhaps you could look into that.

JoanneH

It varies depending on your fight. In general they do give you after dinner a small bag for the overnight part of flight, there is all the food and snacks you could ever eat out at the rear of the plane along with drinks. My last flight this kit had water, apple, snack but not the kind of stuff they passed out a few years ago like eye shade, toothpaste etc.

CounterClifton

All drinks, alcoholic or regular are included, personal video games and movies and tv are pretty extensive and also included. Meals are ok. Better than AA or UA, but still airline meals. Some have been pretty good. As Doug says, there's a bar at the back at the galley that's self serve with sodas, water and juice but they also come around pretty often to check on you before the lights are dimmed. I find the seats relatively comfortable for economy. They are "thin" seats on the a380 which give a little more room than seat pitch would indicate, as there's less padding taking up space, but offer pretty decent support (I thought so anyway, though my wife prefers their 747s with the Recaro seats). Still giving out the amenity kits Joanne as describes.

ahotpoet

Thanks everyone. Well I am certainly breathing easier after reading your replies. I have flown on seemingly interminable flights before but the buzz on these Transpacific ones is not very good. Then from there I have to wait a few hours to connect to a flight to Tampa. I fully expect to be a zombie when I get home.

CounterClifton

fwiw, I'm from the US, my wife and her family Australian so we've done these flights a lot these last 15 years. And I'm really an awful flyer. As much as I love travel, I don't generally enjoy the onboard time at all. But the trans-pacific ones have been easier than some of those we used to take elsewhere mostly because the quality on-board many of the airlines available this direction is just better.

AAFrequentFlyer

Just so you know, Qantas reported the biggest yearly loss just yesterday, about $2.6B, yes billion.

They may be cutting on their service(s)

I love the airline. Had fabulous time flying from LAX to SYD but I did fly first class so can't tell you what economy is like.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28948855

CounterClifton

Yeah, they took a major hit. 3x the projected loss. They've not gone into receivership or anything though.


The discussion is that they are considering breaking it up so that the international side operates on it's own. International makes them money. It's domestic that's killing them. Virgin, Tiger Air have changed the game where it used to be very profitable domestically. Suspect that breaking out international as it's own entity would get them past a prior issue with the unions of putting some of their maintenance and ops at the other end of key routes, like in Thailand.