Aussie Flyer

My big trip this year is to London for the royal wedding of HRH Prince William to Kate Middleton. My plans are now finalised and I leave in two days time. I'm flying to Europe with Thai Airways from Melbourne in business class, with connections to the UK on Lufthansa.  I'll be visiting Edinburgh and London in the UK and Berlin in Germany. Stay tuned for my upcoming reports from this trip with a ROYAL theme!

As most of my regular readers know I spend a lot of time in Bangkok. Despite this I had never flown on Bangkok Airways before. I spend more time flying on Thai (due to being a Star Alliance partner) and Air Asia (due to their cheap prices). With a need to travel to Chiang Mai at short notice I checked out the airline web sites and found the best deal was with Bangkok Airways, so I booked online with my credit card and had my itinerary confirmed within minutes for a flight the following morning. I arrived at the airport bright and early and found the Bangkok Air check-in counters. There was a bit of promotional material around for new services to Mumbai and Dhaka: Celebrating 2 new destinations: Mumbai and Dhaka The check-in queue for economy had about 20 people in it but it moved along pretty swiftly. It wasn't long before I was handed my boarding pass and made my way through to the domestic flights security and on to the lounge. Bangkok Airways Check-in located at BKK Row

For the past few years I have spent most of my flying time on Star Alliance airlines, but in 2010 I decided I would move some of my travel to Oneworld alliance, including my national carrier Qantas. As a recent convert to Qantas this is my first opportunity to review a Qantas international flight and what better flight number to start with than QF1, the daily service from Sydney to London via Bangkok operated by the Boeing 747-400.  I only flew as far as Bangkok so this post only covers that first sector, featuring the beautiful First Class lounge facilities in Sydney that Qantas have become quite famous for. I arrived in Sydney from Melbourne on a Qantas Boeing 767 (scored an operational upgrade to Business on that sector). For those continuing on to international flights Qantas provide a cross-tarmac terminal transfer bus service. I enjoy the bus ride as you get to drive past lots of aircraft and see them up close. I took a few shot's on the way over: Qantas Domestic Terminal