“Chaos at ZQN after VA flight delay”

[Princess Fiona]

An alleged security breach by VA after a flight delay on Sunday.
Another flight cancelled on Saturday evening and pax sleeping in the terminal with blankets.

Stuff

 

[kpc]

Forget the security breach...the horror of having to sleep on the airport floor overnight!!!

 

[DC3]

...the horror of having to sleep on the airport floor overnight!!!

Some do that by choice for some reason. As long as everyone was treated properly and offered hotel accommodation for the night?

 

[azza007]

Being Sat night Easter weekend supposedly no hotel accommodation available

 

[SYD]

Being Sat night Easter weekend supposedly no hotel accommodation available

Yes, reported elsewhere that all hotels were full (as you’d expect).

Good that QF had a stash of mats and sleeping bags for such circumstances when the poo hits the fan and they can’t do much else AND that they did the right thing to make a cough show slightly less coughty.

 

[anat0l]

EDIT: OK just re-read the article (articles) a bit more carefully.

So first there was an aircraft going tech that results in the overnight stay (because there isn't another room in town to be found). Suppose if there are no rooms, there are no rooms - what are you going to do. (I suppose the crew had rooms somewhere for them after they timed out) Two $8 vouchers seems rather insulting, however.

Then, the next day there is a significant delay because an imbecilic staffer (airline or otherwise) violates security protocols. I wonder what happened to resolve that, because I picture usually that when something security breach like happens, the entire secure area is evacuated and everyone gets rescreened, which means inconveniencing nearly an entire terminal of passengers.

 

[PERLHR]

So no accommodation...and they say Australian economy is struggling.....yeah right!

 

[SYD]

So no accommodation...and they say Australian economy is struggling.....yeah right!

It was probably full of Australians!

 

[L2.]

Invercargill is the nearest other significant town that may have had accommodation available. Still 2.5 hours away by road though.

The only possible contingency that I could think of in this situation would be for an airline to hire buses to take passengers to accommodation down there, if it were available, and operate a recovery flight out of Invercargill the next day.

Dunedin could be an option too, which being a much larger city would be likely to have relatively plentiful accommodation, however that's starting to become a bit of a long bus ride.

 

[jb747]

I was in Queenstown a week ago. The weather was pretty poor, which resulted in two ANZ flights, and one QF diverting to Christchurch. What surprised me, was that all three of these aircraft then had their outbound flights from Q’town cancelled, even though the weather improved shortly thereafter, exactly in line with the forecasts. VA and JQ all arrived and operated as normal. All of the flights were chockers, so none of the affected passengers had any alternatives. From what I could gather, hotels weren’t being offered; they just wanted them out of the terminal.

 

[DC3]

Being Sat night Easter weekend supposedly no hotel accommodation available

 

[PERLHR]

So how many beds in Queenstown and occupancy rate? .. Last figures I see after a quick look on line was from 2019!!