08dec QF74 incident

[anat0l]

unfortunately these incidents happen daily around the world. No airline is immune to it.

Suffice to say that irrespective of this, passengers still complain bitterly and it is still clearly the airline's fault, so no one cares, "the airline stuffed up".

So passengers just go to the next carrier until they stuff up, and the cycle continues.

It really is a "race" to see how fast they can get them off the aircraft and into hotels.

No one hopes to be in this situation, but it does happen. What would have been worse is if QF simply offloaded the pax and thrown them onto the street. Now that does happen with other airlines around the world...

 

[straitman]

Can I just add my 2 cents worth from row 71. It was 7 hours before we got off the plane. We had a cup of water after 3 hours and a small bag of cookies and a muesli bar after 4 hours.

We were finally checked in at the Hilton, Oakland at 9:30 am (over 11 hours after boarding). The Qantas staff were all doing their best I am sure but the systems in place were clearly inadequate to deal with this scenario. I no longer have confidence in flying with Qantas. Clearly there are reliability issues, compounded by lack of management and planning.

jd1968,

Welcome to AFF.

Please let us know what other airline out there does it significantly better. As nlagalle and anat0l pointed out this is something that happens to all airlines from time to time. Sometimes they handle it better than others.

IMHO it is much better to be stuck on the ground, wishing you were airborne than stuck airborne and wishing you were on the ground.

 

[Keith009]

Got a $700 flight voucher from QF in the mail today. Good for QF and oneworld, and valid for a year.

Can I just add my 2 cents worth from row 71. It was 7 hours before we got off the plane. We had a cup of water after 3 hours and a small bag of cookies and a muesli bar after 4 hours.

We were finally checked in at the Hilton, Oakland at 9:30 am (over 11 hours after boarding). The Qantas staff were all doing their best I am sure but the systems in place were clearly inadequate to deal with this scenario. I no longer have confidence in flying with Qantas. Clearly there are reliability issues, compounded by lack of management and planning.

Welcome to AFF jd1968, and thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate how frustrating it must have been, however it was by no means an easy situation for anyone.

I am sure, had the QF crew known that we were going to be sitting on the tarmac for that long, a more elaborate food service would've been offered or the flight cancelled entirely there and then with all pax to disembark. As it was a rolling delay, there was still an expectation that the flight would leave SFO relatively switftly after seemingly minor glitches are fixed.

Yes, it's just come to my attention this afternoon that some passengers in whY have had nowhere to stay for the night. Though from what you're saying, reports of pax in whY having to camp overnight in SFO are incorrect? I am sure it'd have been very hard to book accommodation for 270-odd pax at that time of the night, as shown by the rather desperate choice of a hotel in Oakland which is in a completely different side of the Bay Area, all the way over in East Bay. Even though there appears to be a vast selection of hotels around the area, it is not uncommon for 3 or 4 large conferences to be going on in SF at the same time and for these hotels to be completely booked out by conference attendees.

 

[jb747]

Rolling delays are hideously difficult to deal with...

From the captain's perspective...he wants to get the APU fixed, or into a state from which it can be MELed, so that he can go. There is a limited amount of time available for this. The roster gives about 3:45 spare from the absolute CASA flight time limit. The earlier you go the better, as nobody is feeling any better as the time goes by.

If you disembark the passengers, you are immediately applying a roughly 90 minute delay to the flight. If the engineers come back with a fix, then that 90 minutes will still apply.

You cannot start a food service for a lot of reasons, but legally the carts are not allowed to be blocking the aisles whilst on the ground. Additionally, it's quite likely that as the aircraft was on ground power, the galley power would have been load shed anyway. From what I remember of the SFO terminal, there would have been nothing open inside anyway...

So, if someone has a better way of handling this sort of delay, I'd love to hear it. Getting people off the aircraft, as an initial response, simply doesn't work, and will in most long haul cases be tantamount to cancelling the flight.

 

[nlagalle]

From the captain's perspective...he wants to get the APU fixed, or into a state from which it can be MELed, so that he can go.

jb747, as always your insight into the how and why on this is invaluble!

Thanks again..

 

[Keith009]

jb747, as always your insight into the how and why on this is invaluble!

Thanks again..

+1
[random words to make up character requirement]

 

[dogman]

First time poster here... thought this an appropriate place to start.

I was also on the infamous QF74 (J class in F seat), and whilst this was also a major personal inconvenience for me, I only have positive things to say about QF's handling of the situation. As usual the service and communication in that cabin was excellent, and obviously there are worse seats to be stuck in... I was comfortable... in fact I actually managed to get some sleep through it all.

I was fortunate enough to have a place to stay, and was able to exit as soon as it was announced we were offloading. (around 4am) A quick shared cab ride with another QF74'er and I was comfortable in my bed by 5am.

Hotels on a week night at this time of year are always a problem in the west bay area... my company alone had about 200 people in town, many of whom struggled to get into their first choice hotels. So yeah, whilst the comfort inn san mateo isnt flash, I dont expect there would have been many alternatives within 20miles.

As someone else noted, the only disappointment was the (re)check in experience, which could have been better organised with the arrival of transport and earlier opening of checkin counters.

I received my "we're sorry" letter in the mail this week along with a flight/travel voucher... which wont make up for the disappointment of missing my 6yo son's birthday... but appreciate the gesture, and will continue to fly/recommend QF in the future. (another QF73/74 run in early Jan11.... fingers crossed)

 

[Keith009]

Welcome to AFF, dogman. Thanks for sharing your experience.

You wouldn't happen to have been at the Salesforce.com conference, would you?

 

[dogman]

thanks

close... a little further down the 101 in Redwood City.

Could have been worse though... could have been an Oracle conference on!

Although I just read the post above re Hilton @ Oakland... guess that shows how bad it was that night.

Must say, I thought it was rather poetic as I sat in the SYD lounge that morning watching the old girl getting towed over to maintenance ;-)

 

[straitman]

dogman,

Welcome to AFF.

Thanks for posting your experience.

 

[totalk]

Very intriguing report.