Fly Me Friendly

Today we flew back from Tweed Heads to Melbourne and I have to say the time in the Gold Coast terminal wasn’t that bad at all. While our aircraft was packed solid, there was lots of space in the departure lounge, check in was a breeze and the walk out to the aircraft was fun. Of course, the clear blue skies and lack of rain helped (we’d had rain all weekend so I was dreading getting soaked today).

This time we flew back on a B737-700 and the differences inside between it and the B737-800 we flew up on were quite obvious. Only one over-wing exit, row 12 is the exit row (on the way up we were in row 12 and were one or two rows ahead of the exit at least) and much more cramped seating.

On the way up from Melbourne we’d had a bunch of young sporting types in the back who were being a tad rowdy at times. I was thinking this time would probably be crying kids but no, it looked like the same bunch of rowdies were heading back home this flight. DOH!

So, which is worse. An aircraft with crying kids or an aircraft of rowdy sporting types? Hell, how about both? We had some kids behind us and rowdies all around us. Hmmm… Actually, it wasn’t too bad as I think they were all pretty tired and slept or snoozed all the way down.

We hit some chop coming into Melbourne as usually – a bit of sharp stuff around the tops of the clouds as we descended then some rolling lumpy stuff around 8,000′ which lasted until around 3,000′ then mostly cleared up. Sadly, one of the lads around us couldn’t handle the ride and barfed during the last few minutes – whoops – there goes that “cool status”…