Trip Report: Qantas 787 Dallas to Sydney in Business Class (DFW-SYD)

UPDATE 3/2026: I flew Qantas again (A380 LAX > SYD, no full trip report, sorry) and I wanted mention that it was a much better flight than the one I describe here from six months earlier. I don't know if it's the A380 versus the 787, or just a Dallas vs. LAX crew, but on the A380 I had proper turndown service like you'd get on ANA or Singapore, onboard espresso (with oat milk on offer), and a vastly friendlier and attentive crew than on my Dallas flight. The rest of the voyage (food, seat, no-wifi, etc.) was largely the same.

This was my first-ever trip on Qantas (!!) and, in short, it felt like United Polaris on a good day – pleasant staff, comfortable bed, decent food. 85,000 Alaska miles (topped up with my BILT card). It's a well-timed flight: take off around 10pm, eat dinner, go to bed, wake up, have breakfast, land at 6am in Sydney. I didn't even have time to watch a movie, just a couple games of Balatro ;)

*gay gasp*

👎 As already mentioned, no wifi. I’ll forgive LATAM for not having it, but for a carrier with this pricing and reputation it’s unacceptable. Full stop. That said, it’s an overnight flight completely designed around maximizing your sleep so it just wasn’t that big a deal in practice.

There's a staff person behind that monitor, I swear

👍 Very nice that Qantas sprung for American Airlines Flagship Lounge access (versus the normal American lounge), even better that they had a staffed Qantas customer service counter inside that lounge.

👍 The seat is nice, good for tall people. Rows alternate between aisle-adjacent and window-adjacent. The window-adjacent ones have more privacy.

👍 Love the eco friendly mattress pad with a pocket to properly anchor it to your seat headrest. (United, are you listening?)

And I saw my reflection...

🤩 The hidden coke mirror was a nice touch.

Big selection of Asian movies

👍 IFE selections seemed pretty sparse to me, but maybe the Australia-centric TV shows menu would be more appealing to Australians than it was to me. The movie section was a lot better: lots of Asian, Indian, and European titles in addition to the Hollywood and Australian ones

🤷 While the staff are very friendly, they definitely have American levels of proactiveness: no refills on water or wine, no dirty dish pickup beyond the first pass. Yes, you can call and they’ll happily take care of it, but ten people walked past my dirty dishes and empty wine glass and didn’t do anything. A wealthy Asian country's flag carrier this ain't.

my BECSPK had local salt and pepper packets from a famous Aussie spice shop

👍 Decent french press coffee with steamed milk. Given how vocally opinionated Australians are about their coffee, this was 5/10. If United had served me this it’d be 7/10.

🤷 My Bacon Egg and Cheese Salt Pepper Ketchup for breakfast was decent, but like the Delta shake shack bun on the way here, it had gotten slowly burnt from the bottom while being reheated so it was tough and chewy, not charred.