Review: QantasLink Ayers Rock to Alice Springs QF1940

This blog is a QantasLink Flight Review and starts near Uluru in the Outback. Connellan Airport is known as Ayers Rock Airport or Uluru Airport by some. For a place with so many names, it's a really small airport. I made my booking as part of a Qantas Explorer Fare.

Uluru Connellan Airport: Security & Gates

Uluru Connellan Airport is small, perhaps the smallest I've ever visited as a solo traveler. That means the security line is pretty short. You can bet that the other people going through are almost definitely your fellow passengers. The agent was very friendly and thorough. I could spot only about 12-15 fellow passengers while we waited.

There are two gates that seem to be operational and they both go out through the same door!

I got chatting to two friends who were visiting Australia from Cornwall – one of my favourite places to travel. It was fun to pass the hour or so waiting to board with a chat.

QantasLink Flight Review: Service

This was a QantasLink flight, which is one of the three airlines covered by the Qantas Explorer ticket for international travelers. The difference between QantasLink and regular Qantas domestic flights is in the comfort of the product and on board service. This economy seat was a little tighter than usual and service was a small bottle of water. As this was such a short flight from Uluru to Alice Springs (less than 40 minutes), there was no need for anything more.

For some reason, the majority of other passengers (I think I see maybe 4 in the photo above) sat at the back.

QantasLink in Flight: The Deep Red Earth

The plane started to taxi towards the Connellan runway. I snapped a picture of the deep red earth, almost despite myself. I had seen so much of it at Uluru and would see more at Alice, but…

…as I came to write this blog a couple of weeks later, in Perth, the deep red earth brought back a lovely memory of the Outback and the lovely people I met there.

The flight itself was brief and unremarkable, which is about as much as you can hope for from this short hop.

Alice Springs Airport

After the size of Connellan Airport, Alice Springs seemed huge!

There are plenty of shops for what is also a comparatively small airport. Everything felt very new and clean. It's interesting to learn that this airport is near capacity and an extensive plan has been put in place to grow air traffic coming into this, the 18th largest airport in Australia.

I found the baggage carousel very quickly and the bags took just a moment or two to come through. This level of service is impressive, even if the airport is less complex than an international hub.

It was back out to the relentless flies that you get in the Outback and some completely non-functioning insect repellant that I was using. Outback Flies are like, “nah, not me mate”. I hope you enjoyed today's QantasLink Flight Review – check out other Flight Reviews here.