Darwin to Brisbane Trip

I was on the road early this morning because I had a long drive ahead of me as I was going out bush to a Mango Farm to see how our products were performing.

On the way back I came across some cut outs of war planes on the side of the road and then I saw a sign saying "WW11 Strauss Air Strip" so I stopped and took a few photos.

Strauss Airfield was an airfield constructed between 19 March to 27 April 1942 near Noonamah, during World War II. It was also known as 27 Mile Field or Humpty Doo Strip. Constructed by sections of the United States Army 808th Engineer Aviation Battalion, they built a single runway of 5,000 ft × 100 ft (1,524 m × 30 m) wide with associated taxiways and dispersals. The airfield was officially dedicated as Strauss Field in memory and honour of United States Captain Allison W. Strauss who was killed piloting a P-40 Kittyhawk from the 8th Pursuit Squadron ("The Blacksheep") of the 49th Fighter Group after crashing into Darwin harbour during a Japanese air raid on the Darwin RAAF airfield on 27 April 1942.

After a very busy "hot" week in Darwin it was time to come home, I normally fly QANTAS every time but sometimes, like today, I couldn't get a flight on QANTAS so I had to come home on Virgin Australia. Last time I flew out of Darwin the check in with Virgin was pathetic and sadly today was no different. Virgin have 8 check in counters; 1 for Priority, 2 for bag drop and 5 for check in... Well they had 3 people all up checking people in and it took me 55 minutes from the minute I lined up to dropping my bag off. When I got to the counter there were no apologies for the delay so I asked "are you short staffed because it has taken me nearly an hour" and the reply I got was this "this is normal"

Well it is quite clear Virgin are putting profit before customers as the QANTAS check ins were all clear and done and there were still many people waiting to check in at Virgin when I walked away. That in turn made our flight depart late.

I arrived at the airport at 12.30 pm and finally got to gate 6 at 1.35; we started boarding at 1.55 (20 mins late) and I was in 29F on this Boeing 737-8FE, the rego for todays flight was VH-VUA.

We pushed back at 2.25 pm and commenced taxiing for runway 29 at 2.30 pm and became airborne at 2.37 pm Darwin time. After take off we maintained runway heading for some time and then banked right and flew back over the airport. We climbed to flight level 370 and our track today took us over Longreach and Emerald and on to Brisbane. We began our descent at 6.03 pm (Brisbane time) and landed on runway 19 at 6.38 pm. 

QANTAS B737-838 VH-XZO (CN 44576)

TERRITORY AIR PIPER PA 32R-301 VH-FGG (CN 32R-8113103)

JETSTAR A320-232 VH-VFV (CN 5858)

CAREFLIGHT BEECHCRAFT B200 VH-ZCN (CN BB-1987)

MY FLIGHT HOME

VIRGIN AUSTRALIA B737-8FE VH-VUA (CN 33997)

ALLIANCE F28- MARK 70 VH-QQY (CN 11575)

AIR NORTH EMBRAER 120ER VH-ANK (CN 120-155)

SUPER STALLION CH 53E NUMBER 07