QF436, SYD-MEL, Business Class

Flight Details:

• Flight QF463, SYD-MEL
• Aircraft: 737-800
• Departure: 6:30pm (scheduled) 7pm (actual)
• Arrival: 8:05pm (scheduled)
• Seat: 2D

Dinner Meal.

This was a quick, simple flight.  Not an exciting review, I know.  Domestic flight from Sydney to Melbourne.

Cabin & Seat

The business cabin is a 2-2 layout, only 3 rows.

2-2 Business Cabin.

Seats are quite wide, and fairly comfortable.  

Seat Controls.

Simple controls for reline, "back comfort control", legrest, footrest.  The seat was fairly comfortable though.

No power at seat.

Amenities & Service

Not much in terms of amenities, no wifi, no in-seat screens, only the front row had tv screens playing safety video and Qantas news. 

Bottles of water awaited us at the seats.

Service was excellent, even though such a short flight . I was impressed with how the FA showed us the bottles of wine as she offered them, even though there were not choices.

Cuisine

Pre-takeoff we were offered ... sparkling water.

I'm sure this is a sad thing for some people - why not sparkling wine! - but for me, I thought it was great.  I always drink sparkling water, and normally pre-takeoff drinks are limited to sparkling wine and still water.

Drink and Meal Cart.

Soon after we were underway, a meal was offered from the cart.  Two options, a hot item of a chicken curry with gai lan, shiitake mushrooms, etc over jasmine rice, or, a smoked salmon salad with Chardonnay dressing.  One single red wine (Shiraz), one single white (Riesling, from Western Australia).  Still or sparkling water.  I was again thrilled with the sparkling water.

A bread basket was also presented, with simple sliced bread, and all meals came with a cupcake for dessert.

Sparkling Water, Riesling.

.For wine, I opted for white to start my journey.

It wasn't very interesting.  Not harsh, not acidic, but also it didn't have much going on at all.  Eh.

Dinner Tray.

I planned to skip the meal since I nibbled in both the Qantas Club and Qantas Business lounges (review coming soon!), and had really excellent onion rings from Bar Roma, but, some veggies sounded good, so I did go for the salad.

It, along with the dessert, were served at the same time on try.

Smoked Salmon Salad with Hardboiled Egg and Chardonnay Dressing.

The salad was ... ok.  Some elements were good, but, I wasn't really into it.  A nice light option that did have sufficient protein though, if that is what you are going for.

The lettuce was fresh and crisp.  The green beans were fresh and crisp, blanched.  Both the highlights of the salad.

The potato was nicely cooked, not too mushy, and actually kinda satisfying (guess I wanted carbs?).  I didn't have the egg, olives, or tomato.

The salmon was ... not great.  Kinda slimy.  Not smoky.  I didn't care for it at all.

The real issue was the dressing.  There was way too much of it, it was oily, and I didn't like the flavor.  It ruined even the lettuce and beans for me.

Dessert Box.

The dessert came in a little box, with a shelf life of many months, although it also said it was for consumption of the day of the flight only.

Simmone's Kitchen:Hummingbird Cupcake.

I was impressed with how it looked though, it did seem fairly fresh.

It was ... ok.  Basically, a sour cream carrot cake with pineapple and cream cheese frosting.  The cake was fairly dry, and had a slightly odd flavor to it.  I wasn't really into it.

The cream cheese frosting was fantastic though, good cream cheese flavor, very creamy.  I really liked the frosting.