Smooth flight with great staff shame about the hard seats
Cabin crew were really good. Flying in to Perth from Adelaide on domestic flight. The arrival for wheel chair use however has no air bridge provided. Unloading meant a scissor lift. Otherwise a good service.
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.
Although a local trip via international flight it was fairly straight forward albeit more checks than desirable for local travel. On arrival Perth collecting luggage the trollies were hidden in one end of the long hall.
Flight was fine but a domestic flight was called by Jetstar international. This meant going through immigration and custom scanning twice. Long queues were experienced which were frustrating. We were using a wheelchair and exit at Perth needed a scissor lift as no air bridge provided. No fast lane at Perth for wheelchair. The staff were helpful but this system is poor.
There's a reason why fare is cheap, no amenities.
It is what it is - nothing more, nothing less. No entertainment onboard but one kinda knows that when buying a ticket on a no frills airline. I choose Jetstar only because of price.
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.
