[Shano]

QF 404 MEL-SYD
B734
Seat 7D

As I was one of the last to board it was a struggle to find O/H locker space for my roll-aboard. How dare all of the other passengers take up so much luggage space! After a bit of re-arranging it was stowed above row 3, meaning I did not have to fight traffic on arrival to collect this bag. With much consternation I was forced to place my backpack under the seat in front of me.

We departed on time and then shortly after the bacon and egg muffin served for breakfast. I grabbed the Australian Way magazine after breakfast and managed to complete one of the Sudoku puzzles before we descended into SYD.

Our arrival gate was as far as we could possibly get from the international transfer area, so it was a brisk walk to the other end of the terminal to catch the bus over the T1. I recalled serfty posting that busses left at the 00, 20, 40 minute marks every hour, hence my brisk pace. BP swiped, down the escalator and then straight onto the shuttle bus to the international terminal. I had originally planned to put T1 here but can never remember the correct terminal designations, so rather than sounding like an idiot thought it better to simply put international terminal.

At T1 (or T2, or T3 ???) I went to the APEC lane and was through immigration in a couple of minutes (treatment befitting a WP I’d say). For the first time is quite a while my PP was stamped on departure without requesting this be done.

Once through immigration it then occurred to me that by transferring MEL-SYD-XXX you miss out on the express security clearance as no voucher was issued in MEL.



Thankfully I was only in the queue for a few minutes and then through into DF where I needed to pick up another memory card for my digital camera. I then changed some money for the deteriorating American Peso and then made my way to the QF First Lounge.

I decided that I would have a sit down breakfast in the lounge this time, so made my way over to find a vacant table. I was surprised to see a mate of mine that I did my engineering degree with, so I joined him and ordered the ham omelette, coffee and fresh OJ. It turns out that he was also on QF107, but seated on the UD (spoilt prat!).

After eating, a couple of cups of coffee and catching up with my mate from uni I then found a vacant PC and logged onto aa.com to print my LAX-DFW-ORD-PIT boarding passes. MY QFF # was clearly displayed on the boarding passes, so the IndiAA agent had successfully managed to do this. Then I logged onto my webmail account to check and answer a few emails then it was time to wander down to the gate for boarding.