Q is for Qantas, that's good enough for me.

We recently went on a holiday.  It was (mostly) delightful.  One cause for concern as we travelled was hearing interesting things about Qantas as they were set to carry us home (well within WA spitting distance anyway.  Texans have nothin' on us.).  First there was the partial strike.  Then, all Qantas planes grounded. Would we be stuck in SA forever?  To be fair, I wouldn't mind being stuck in North Adelaide.  Or the Barossa for that matter...  But we did quite want to get home, back to normal, back to work, back to regular sleeping patterns for the little fellow and our regular bed for us old folks.

Then - ta da! - Qantas' strike over as they were erm... encouraged... back to work by Canberra.  Because of this, I'm sure you've heard plenty of unhappy things about Qantas and flying red kangaroos everywhere.  People have been compensated, sure, but there will be backlash and some will refuse to fly them ever again.

Not us.  On our holiday we flew VirginBlue, Jetstar (Qantas Lite) and Qantas.  Hands down, Qantas treated us the best.

When did we get to the point when absolutely no service was the standard? I understand that flights started that offered less in order to cost less, but the flights were comparable in price.  How lovely to not have to book and pay extra for little things like luggage, water and nibbles.  When we got to the airport, the staff were incredibly helpful and personable.  They offered us a stroller for our youngen too, which was a welcome break!  He is a bit on the hefty side.  They let us have heavy bags without threats of extra fees because of our son.  On the plane they brought me a pillow to help me when I was feeding and in general they went the extra mile to make us comfortable.

Quite a change from a different trip we took on Tiger from Brisvegas to Melbourne where, upon disembarking, we didn't even enter the terminal, merely followed the leader through covered alleys until we ended up at a luggage carousel in a shed.

So, while Qantas had a terrible time as of late, I hope they keep flying.  It was nice to be treated well, even special, just because.