My first commercial flight of 2024 was with Virgin Australia to Adelaide, as I was spending a weekend in the South Australian capital before school went back.

After arriving at Hobart Airport on a fairly busy Friday evening, we slowly navigated our way through bag drop (we had checked in online the prior evening so already had digital boarding passes) and security, before making our way to Gate 3.

A few hours later, our aircraft pulled up. VH-VBZ is an 18 year old Boeing 737-700, that has been operating for Virgin Australia its entire life. This aircraft also had the honour of operating the inaugural Virgin Australia service from Cairns-Tokyo back in June 2023.

I was particularly excited about flying VH-VBZ as it would be my first time flying a 737-700.

Soon we were making our way onto the plane and to our seats in Row 18.

The cabin of the Virgin Australia 737-700 is very similar to that of the 737-800 (which I reviewed here). The only main differences are slightly less legroom on the 700, and some white plastic boards on the seatbacks. These boards cover up old Inflight Entertainment screens that were used back when VH-VBZ was flying internationally for Virgin Blue (who were renamed Virgin Australia in 2011).

Virgin Australia have also implemented slightly new menus since I last flew them in September 2023. The new menus look different to before, though the contents are fairly similar, with just a few minor changes.

Soon after boarding, we were taxiing out and rocketing off from Hobart Airport, passing Cambridge Aerodrome on the climb out.

Once we levelled out, I connected to Virgin’s free inflight Wifi. For free, all passengers can access Virgin’s inflight entertainment portal, which allows you to access a decent range of TV, films, podcasts and audio books. For a further fee, passengers can buy a wifi pass allowing them to access anything else not in the Virgin entertainment portal. Velocity Platinum and Business Class guests enjoy this for free. On this flight all I used the entertainment portal for was tracking our flight, and on the return flight I read an audiobook.

Shortly after reaching cruising altitude, the friendly cabin crew began the service. For economy class passengers water, tea and coffee are free, with an extensive buy on board menu also available. I had a cup of water and a KitKat (which cost $5).

The main highlight of the rest of the flight was some nice window views, particularly on the approach into Adelaide.

We touched down in Adelaide ten minutes ahead of schedule, having had a standard but nice flight with Virgin.

The return flight on Monday, this time onboard a 737-800 VH-YQM, had little to note. At Adelaide Airport I checked out the Vickers Vimy exhibition, which was interesting but the lighting made photography nearly impossible.

The flight home itself was very standard. A strong tailwind helped us arrive back in Hobart 25 minutes early, and there were some nice views of Glenelg as we took off. Otherwise though, a standard Virgin Australia flight.

All in all, both these flights were fine, and I enjoyed flying a 737-700, but there was nothing too interesting to note. Virgin Australia continue to provide a perfectly reasonable service for domestic travel across Australia, and they remain my main airline of choice for Australian air travel.

I hope you enjoyed reading this trip report, if so please consider checking out more of my posts as well as my Instagram and Youtube. I should have at least one more blog about this Adelaide Trip out in due course. Thanks for reading and have a great day!