McBec and I went to Sydney on the weekend to help my Dad celebrate his 60th birthday (happy birthday, Dad!) and thanks to the awesomeness of parents flew courtesy of Dad’s credit card. This meant that we boarded a Qantas plane for the first time in ages since our tightarseness usually means Virgin or Jetstar bookings.

On arrival at the terminal one first procures one’s boarding pass using Qantas’ trademarked QuickCheck (sic) machine before joining the bag drop line. No different to the other carriers except in one crucial area: Qantas had a whopping three surly staff members behind desks to deal with the massive line of bag dropping passengers. We arrived over an hour before our return flight from Sydney to Melbourne and I joined the queue in plenty of time but it took so long for the line to move that there was a “final call” for my flight before I’d even dropped my bag.

Then when we arrived back in Melbourne there was a long wait at the baggage collection area before two 767s worth of bags from Sydney and Perth were spewed onto the same carousel (despite two carousels being free just beside it) so 700 angry passengers attempted to elbow, spit and bite their way to the front.

Qantas are shite.

There has been some atrocious Ben Cousins-related media coverage lately but today’s News Limited feed, covering Cousins’ flight to LA, plumbed new depths:

A Qantas flight attendant who looked after Cousins on the flight … said Cousins was given a copy of the sports pages of one of the Sydney newspapers during the flight.

Cousins, riding in business class alone and wearing his trademark snakeskin boots, jeans and loose, white V-neck T-shirt, apparently had a good flight. “He slept for a lot of it,” the flight attendant said.

The crew also enjoyed having Cousins onboard for the 14-hour flight. Qantas gave him one of the best seats on the plane, 11B, the flight attendant said. “My female colleagues particularly really loved having him on the flight,” the flight attendant said. “They thought he was a hottie.”

This is absolutely appalling journalism. There was no mention of several facts of pivotal importance, and several key questions remain unanswered:

* What did Cousins select from the in-flight menu?
* Did he drink lattes or flat whites? (Of particular interest to some bloggers)
* What did he watch/play with on his in-seat LCD screen?
* Did he pay attention during the pre-flight safety demonstration or did he look aimlessly out the window?
* Did he puke in one of those paper bags?
* Was the plane a Boeing 747, a 777 or an Airbus A340?
* What was the pilot’s name and did he welcome passengers with a witty remark?
* Was Lisa Robertson onboard and, if so, did Cousins spend any protracted lengths of time in the lavatory?