Knees in back from passenger behind, limited seat pockets, no entertainment.
The Ryanair of Australia. Not impressed. Forced me to gate check my bag as it was over their weight limit. Charged me $125 for the privilege. Then said plane hold was locked and it would have to go out in the next flight, which was the following day. Explained that I was on a cruise the next day and the plane would not arrive until after the ship left, and that it would be impossible to catch up with the cruise at any point. Lady at the gate unimpressed. So to sum up they were ready to charge me $125 to lose a bag. Finally got it resolved by appealing to management, but the whole episode was not good for the blood pressure. The gate lady said they followed the Ryanair business model which means first time passengers get penalized for doing things that other airlines routinely allow.
Improved experience over our last years flight when also we flew local but on an international scheduled flight. The double processing is still unwelcome i.e. by security and then by border force having to produce a licence and boarding pass repeatedly on departure and return. Obviously suits the airline rather than the local traveller. The flight and crew were good though a helper on return was offhand having to push the wheel chair did the bare minimum we felt.
Flight was delayed both directions but once in the air was ok. Boarding out of Melbourne is just a mess.
Overall good trip I find seats a bit hard. We were waiting on board for about an hour for 2 passengers with some document issue. This main our arrival late for our pickup person.
There's a reason why fare is cheap, no amenities.
Boarding was easy and unstressful, though the early "final call" was a bit off-putting. The crew were pleasant, and the seats were comfortable. The prices for food and drink were reasonable, apart from tea and coffee, where simple percolated coffee was charged at espresso prices. Deboarding was OK, though some Jetstar passengers appear to have a bad habit of pushing forward from their assigned rows, making it more difficult to get out for passengers that have paid a premium to sit up-front. Jetstar might want to look to address this to stop it from spreading.
I got to the airport earlier than I expected, and they let me change to an earlier flight with no trouble.
We were visiting from California and did not know Melbourne. When we arrived at the main airport, where we also arrived when we flew in, we found to our horror that we were at the wrong airport! There was no obvious to us indication that there were two airports that Jetstar flew out of in Melbourne, or even that there were two airports. The staff tried to find us seats to Sydney but none were available, so we got an Uber and went to the other airport and managed to catch the original flight. The staff were great and very helpful, including figuring out how to check what bag to not have to pay extra for the luggage. I was contrasted with Ryan Air that we had flown with in Europe a few months previously and been treated as cattle and no smiles, no help, just line up and pay. We were impressed by the friendliness and the help extended to us.
They experienced problems with the opening of the front door when we flew into Adelaide
