QantasLink to Brisbane
Another gorgeous morning at Qualia. Unfortunately, it's getaway day and time to go home. We relaxed all morning, packed and then headed out in our cart for our 1pm shuttle ride to the airport.
HTI was pretty empty and we were thru security quickly and at the gate in no time. While getting to Australia using miles was easy, getting home directly using miles during the New Years week was simply impossible. The best I could come up with was a $4,700 roundtrip Qantas Business Class fare. Hated to do it but I used Chase UR points at 1.5x so each ticket cost 315,000 points. The good news is that we found a very convenient connection and a short 12 hour BNE-LAX flight on the new-ish Qantas 789. We earn miles for the flights and get a free return trip later this year, which we will use to position for Bali.
Our 717 arriving from Brisbane.
And now scheduled to depart 15 minutes early.
Gate agents dutifully rolled out the Priority Board sign and like we've become accustomed to with QF, then proceeded to ignore it and announced general boarding for all. We are in Economy on this short HTI-BNE leg since Chase now uses expedia.com as its search engine and for some reason, despite a completely empty Business cabin, would only sell Economy on this short flight. Not to worry, as QF sold us much more comfortable and roomy exit row seats for only AUD $10.
Since we were sitting right in front of the gate podium, we were the first to board. The long but pleasant walk to our plane.
Roomy exit room with cloth seats that had more cushion and were actually more comfortable that the 717 Business Class seats.
Much more underseat space for bags than in Business. Yes, we did put them in the overhead for take-off and landing.
One last look at the gorgeous scenery around Hamilton Island and the Great Barrier Reef.
On board beverage and snack box service in Economy.
Our first look at Brisbane.
And on the ground at BNE.
For Economy, this was a very pleasant flight with a ton of room in the exit row.