Saturday, 10 October 2020

Great Southern Land Joy Flight

Back in mid July Qantas put on three hour long joy flights for their last 747 and it was a huge success. So on the back of that Qantas decided to put on another joy flight, this time in a 787 and the flight would be for approximately 8 hours long with a flight path encompassing New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Today a 787 with the registration VH-ZND departed Sydney for such a flight and I was listening to it on LiveATC and followed it on Flightradar24.  The joy flight, dubbed the ‘Great Southern Land’ using a calling sign of QF787 pushed back from the domestic terminal just after 10.30am, it had a short taxi out for the runway and departed off 16R at 10.45am. From there the aircraft did a low level fly over the city before heading up the New South Wales coast where it crossed the Queensland border and flew over the Gold Coast, Stradbroke Island  and Sunshine Coast getting down to 2,800 ft. The Dreamliner then continued north to fly over the Whitsundays where it did one circuit over the Great Barrier Reef at 1,400 ft. It then tracked across the country to Ayers Rock and Kata Tjuta to showcase the iconic red centre. The aircraft got down as low as 3,800 feet and it circled both Ayers Rock and Kata Tjuta twice so passengers on both sides of the aircraft got to see the amazing sites.
During the eight-hour journey passengers were served a Neil Perry menu.













Prices for the history making flight were as listed below
Six business class seats were sold at $3,787 each (earning 10,000 Qantas Points and 160 Status Credits)
24 premium economy seats were sold at $1,787 each (earning 5,000 Qantas Points and 80 Status Credits)
104 economy seats were sold at $787 (earning 2,400 Qantas Points and 40 Status Credits)

With a flying time of 8 hours 25 minutes the aircraft landed back in Sydney on runway 16R at 7.08pm.
Before the flight there was an auction of memorabilia from Qantas’ recently retired fleet of 747s.

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