chickentalon
Intern
- Joined
- May 4, 2015
- Posts
- 53
- Qantas
- Platinum 1
- Virgin
- Red
What would be reasonable in this situation? Am I being unreasonable? I had to fill in the form 3 times before someone finally got back to me with a response.
TLDR: 24 hours delay. Costs of ~AUD165. The offer from Qantas came back at $49 + 5,000 points goodwill.
They offered to pay for the lounge access, luggage rewrapping and 2x uber trips in santiago (not sure how they calculated these by my CC statement has all that at $93.98 inc the bank fees.)
They wouldn't cover the Uber in Sydney, meals or the points i used to upgrade.
Here is my letter to Qantas:
In short; That was the worst handling of a delay I've ever experienced, by a wide margin. My wife is 7 months pregnant with our first, so it couldn't have come at a worse time for me.
If Qantas is going to fly a 25+ years old plane then you need to have a lot more people on the ground to help out with the delays. I'm all for safety first, and I do appreciate it. But there must be a balance between replacing very old planes and seriously inconveniencing your customers.
- We flew HK->SYD on this plane 10 August 2015. I organised Premium Econ for my staff, who were also flying back from Santiago this time. Similar issue with the old 747, broken plane. We all scored complimentary downgrades to economy and lost a day as a result. So there was much discussion about flying Qantas again, I convinced them to stick with Qantas, seems I'm an idiot and rather unpopular now.
- QF27 Flight over to Santiago was delayed, we missed our connecting flight and were delayed getting to the conference. It meant that my company missed out on setting up in the prime spots for our stall, hugely disappointing.
Now we come to QF28. Not really much of surprise that there are further issues with the plane.
Thank god I used 50,000 of my QFF points to upgrade so I had a bit of room and could work for some of the 5 hours sitting on the tarmac. One of my staff in premium econ did not even have a working entertainment screen.
On the ground and waiting for things to get fixed was ok. the crew handled it as best that they could. I did take a walk down the back of the plane and those guys were suffering badly, it felt like +30c.
After we got off the plane it was a total mess. They told us that qantas staff would be waiting in the arrivals hall, when we collected our luggage we couldn't find anyone, fortunately, we overheard someone say "area 5", so we headed there and waited in the cold, eventually we were bussed to a hotel near the airport. At the hotel it was ridiculous, there was 2 check-in staff for 3 full busloads of passengers, they took about 5min to process each passenger. We waited in the 5c cold because the queue was out the door of the hotel, didn't check-in until an hour and a half of waiting. It's 9:30pm a this point, 9 hours after boarding the broken plane.
Once we did check in, we were given a voucher to the restaurant, which had another huge queue that wasn't going anywhere. So hungry we decided to get in a taxi to a restaurant, after driving around the industrial area it appears as though all the places were closed at 10pm, so we bought some chips from a corner store and taxied back to the hotel. It was 11pm, some PAX were still in the queue to check in, they had been waiting for 3 hours in the line.
Still no information on what to do the next day, so I called Qantas and was told to taxi back to the airport, got there 3 hours before the departure time but the airport was empty of QF staff.
Much walking around and eventually we were able to check in. I had to pay again for my staff to use the LATAM lounge. The screens in the airport displayed a 12noon departure time, but then changed to 1pm. This was confusing as the lounge staff were announcing boarding..... lucky we went to the gate because the plane was indeed going to leave at 12. However, some of the other pax must have been confused, because passengers were missing and we had to wait further on the plane.
I've had similar dramas with other carriers, but never has it been handled so badly. I think you should:
- credit me at least the 50k points I used for my upgrade
- reimburse for the Ubers, baggage rewrapping and LATAM lounge fee for one of my staff
- CLP 8,000 luggage re-wrapping, all had to be unwrapped to get back through customs
- CLP 6,029 Uber to find food late at night
- CLP 11,478 Uber back to airport next day
- USD $30, re-entry to latam lounge the next day
- AUD $62.69 uber the next day home as my wife was no longer available
- Meals, can't remember what we spent, no reciepts from the corner store. Would maybe be $15
- do something seriously nice for my staff, they have been screwed by qantas every time. They busted their cough to help secure overseas sales for my company, one of them missed his birthday (the 12th June) with his family.
Things I recon you need to fix;
- That plane is old. Aviation museum old. Retire it.
- You need to have more staff on the ground to be ready for delays like this. The staff on the ground should hang around to help. there were three hotels booked, you should have someone at each of them to help people check in.
- You need to let people know what the hell is going on. You've got my email, my phone. Send me something to tell me what to do. I shouldn't have to call to find out that I need to get a taxi back to the airport.
- You need to help people notify those waiting for their arrival, I was lucky in that I have good roaming, so I could let my family know. I also loaned my phone to PAX, there was no help for them from Qantas.
- the qantas online customer care feeback form doesn't appear to be working from OS. there is no confirmation, every time you submit the page just reloads.
- Better communications with the airport. When we arrived the next day the terminal screens said 12noon departure, then they updated to 1pm. This caused 1 PAX to be late, they nearly unloaded their bags!
Otherwise, The flight crew did as best they could. I got the same sense from the pilot, she tried everything she could.
TLDR: 24 hours delay. Costs of ~AUD165. The offer from Qantas came back at $49 + 5,000 points goodwill.
They offered to pay for the lounge access, luggage rewrapping and 2x uber trips in santiago (not sure how they calculated these by my CC statement has all that at $93.98 inc the bank fees.)
They wouldn't cover the Uber in Sydney, meals or the points i used to upgrade.
Here is my letter to Qantas:
In short; That was the worst handling of a delay I've ever experienced, by a wide margin. My wife is 7 months pregnant with our first, so it couldn't have come at a worse time for me.
If Qantas is going to fly a 25+ years old plane then you need to have a lot more people on the ground to help out with the delays. I'm all for safety first, and I do appreciate it. But there must be a balance between replacing very old planes and seriously inconveniencing your customers.
- We flew HK->SYD on this plane 10 August 2015. I organised Premium Econ for my staff, who were also flying back from Santiago this time. Similar issue with the old 747, broken plane. We all scored complimentary downgrades to economy and lost a day as a result. So there was much discussion about flying Qantas again, I convinced them to stick with Qantas, seems I'm an idiot and rather unpopular now.
- QF27 Flight over to Santiago was delayed, we missed our connecting flight and were delayed getting to the conference. It meant that my company missed out on setting up in the prime spots for our stall, hugely disappointing.
Now we come to QF28. Not really much of surprise that there are further issues with the plane.
Thank god I used 50,000 of my QFF points to upgrade so I had a bit of room and could work for some of the 5 hours sitting on the tarmac. One of my staff in premium econ did not even have a working entertainment screen.
On the ground and waiting for things to get fixed was ok. the crew handled it as best that they could. I did take a walk down the back of the plane and those guys were suffering badly, it felt like +30c.
After we got off the plane it was a total mess. They told us that qantas staff would be waiting in the arrivals hall, when we collected our luggage we couldn't find anyone, fortunately, we overheard someone say "area 5", so we headed there and waited in the cold, eventually we were bussed to a hotel near the airport. At the hotel it was ridiculous, there was 2 check-in staff for 3 full busloads of passengers, they took about 5min to process each passenger. We waited in the 5c cold because the queue was out the door of the hotel, didn't check-in until an hour and a half of waiting. It's 9:30pm a this point, 9 hours after boarding the broken plane.
Once we did check in, we were given a voucher to the restaurant, which had another huge queue that wasn't going anywhere. So hungry we decided to get in a taxi to a restaurant, after driving around the industrial area it appears as though all the places were closed at 10pm, so we bought some chips from a corner store and taxied back to the hotel. It was 11pm, some PAX were still in the queue to check in, they had been waiting for 3 hours in the line.
Still no information on what to do the next day, so I called Qantas and was told to taxi back to the airport, got there 3 hours before the departure time but the airport was empty of QF staff.
Much walking around and eventually we were able to check in. I had to pay again for my staff to use the LATAM lounge. The screens in the airport displayed a 12noon departure time, but then changed to 1pm. This was confusing as the lounge staff were announcing boarding..... lucky we went to the gate because the plane was indeed going to leave at 12. However, some of the other pax must have been confused, because passengers were missing and we had to wait further on the plane.
I've had similar dramas with other carriers, but never has it been handled so badly. I think you should:
- credit me at least the 50k points I used for my upgrade
- reimburse for the Ubers, baggage rewrapping and LATAM lounge fee for one of my staff
- CLP 8,000 luggage re-wrapping, all had to be unwrapped to get back through customs
- CLP 6,029 Uber to find food late at night
- CLP 11,478 Uber back to airport next day
- USD $30, re-entry to latam lounge the next day
- AUD $62.69 uber the next day home as my wife was no longer available
- Meals, can't remember what we spent, no reciepts from the corner store. Would maybe be $15
- do something seriously nice for my staff, they have been screwed by qantas every time. They busted their cough to help secure overseas sales for my company, one of them missed his birthday (the 12th June) with his family.
Things I recon you need to fix;
- That plane is old. Aviation museum old. Retire it.
- You need to have more staff on the ground to be ready for delays like this. The staff on the ground should hang around to help. there were three hotels booked, you should have someone at each of them to help people check in.
- You need to let people know what the hell is going on. You've got my email, my phone. Send me something to tell me what to do. I shouldn't have to call to find out that I need to get a taxi back to the airport.
- You need to help people notify those waiting for their arrival, I was lucky in that I have good roaming, so I could let my family know. I also loaned my phone to PAX, there was no help for them from Qantas.
- the qantas online customer care feeback form doesn't appear to be working from OS. there is no confirmation, every time you submit the page just reloads.
- Better communications with the airport. When we arrived the next day the terminal screens said 12noon departure, then they updated to 1pm. This caused 1 PAX to be late, they nearly unloaded their bags!
Otherwise, The flight crew did as best they could. I got the same sense from the pilot, she tried everything she could.
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(though they are retiring the 744's as the 787's come online).
