One of my (Aussie) mates has just returned from Oz, along with a Mexican pilot and his wife, and a Hungarian couple.
They travelled down a couple of weeks ago - KIX-CNS - with
QANTAS, and returned with
Australian Airlines.
The cabin service was fine. As a matter of fact, he commented that the F/A's were far more friendly than the QF ones on the way down - but that of course is solely the "luck of the draw" - and may also be due to the fact that some of them were ex-AN (and happy just to be back at work).
But what none of them could believe was that there was
NO reading material of ANY description provided. No inflight magazine - fair enough I guess, as they probably cost a few dollars each to produce, and weigh quite a bit - but no NEWSPAPERS!!??
The food apparently was less than average. A "salad", if a couple of pieces of chopped lettuce leaf and a 2 or 3 bean shoots qualify as such - and a
small serving of spaghetti.
This is an INTERNATIONAL flight (Australia to Japan) remember!
Of interest to the pilots,
viz a viz the other thread concerning Australian Airlines, was the talk amongst the cabin crew (and they ALWAYS seem to find the "good goss" out first!) about AA's prospects for the future.
The route structure to be expanded, to include
Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and
DELHI.
And the fleet to increase to more 767's (we already knew that one
) and
747's.
Anyway, all in all, NONE of the 5 who flew with
Australian Airlines were in the least impressed, however it seems that as the Cairns Port Authority has increased their charges to a ludicrous level (I believe $4,200 for a B747) quite a few international carriers - JAL and SQ among them - have withdrawn their services, giving
Australian something of a monopoly at the moment.
So there we have it, a first hand report of a third class service by the Australia's newest international airline !
