Wine awards cheer Qantas, Air NZ

It wasn’t quite all doom and gloom for Qantas yesterday when chief executive Alan Joyce told a Senate committee that proposed law changes aimed at limiting the airline’s ability to hire foreign-based flight crews would force the airline to pull out of Darwin and Cairns – and could even force a sale of the low-cost subsidiary.

Some respite came at Cellar in the Sky Awards, held in London last night.

Qantas collected a number of awards, including Best First Class Cellar and Best Business Class Cellar for the second year running.

It won the Best First Class Red with the Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2005, Canberra; Best Business Class Red for Mount Langhi Ghiran Cliff Edge Shiraz 2008 and Best First Class Sparkling Wine for Comtes de Champagne Taittinger 1999.

Overall awards included:

Best presented wine list

1 Qantas

2 Air New Zealand

3 Joint: ANA, Qatar Airways

Consistency of wines across Business and First Class

1 Qatar Airways

2 Joint: American Airlines, Cathay Pacific

3 Qantas

4 British Airways

5 ANA