Personally I do mind: it's bad planning by Qantas in my view and the poor pax who could be paying a fortune to fly biz and perhaps also has his/her reasons to be flying business as bought is penalised. Frankly I think it's a nonsense!
Well, with no disrespect to the Oranges, but they were on U tickets. I have a feeling full revenue J would be last on the list. Iirc
@Pushka was also on a CR. Doesn't make it right as they each still paid for J, but it is a little different.
that aside, to the point about poor planning. Crew travel in cabin all the time. When scheduled it's no issue because upgrade requests would make way for them.
I'll make an assumption here, but this clearly was a last minute requirement. Now could they not get two pilots into PER from closer than BNE? You'd think so, but threre are probably logistical reasons why these two had to go and on that flight. Lets say someone in PER was out sick suddenly or naybe an A330 crew was stuck and could not get to PER. whatever.
If you're in business can you always plan for a staff member being sick? Or a family emergency? Or stuck in BNE because QF offloaded them for some stick jockeys? No yiu can't possibly know days in advance. cough happens. And must have been something to pull from BNE to PER imo.
I'm not trying to defend this and it appears anecdotally that this has been happening more (last minute tech crew travel affecting J pax), but trying to see the other side. QF, like MANY industries, are having staff issues (and that WA industrial action too com to think of it, and you can't always plan for the unexpected.
Then it comes down to a choice of disrupting two pax vs potentially 100+
Imo while yes, need to reduce the instance of this happening - and nobody here knows the exact situation, for me it is the QF handling. Not great for The Oranges (who were handled poorly in Zbne and only through soeaking up onboard got a good service focused CSM) and
@Pushka got a worse outcome and treatment (pulled from seats imce board iirc)..
QF need to improve a) handling of such situations as part of b) service recovery.
I think most people know Stuff Happens - but as always it is the handling of it that is something you remember.
For example, last year I was caught in a massive UA meltdown trying to gead east. I got shafted from cancelled flight to cancelled flight to a whacky routing stopping places I never planned to see. What do I remember? All tge agents on tge phone and on the ground who did tgeir best - including one legend in Vegas at 1am who got me out of there when it looked hopeless - and the next day an automatic compensation email and miles. coughtastuc situation for tens of thousands of people, but I remember the positives of how it was handled (in tge main)
So yeah QF are not the best in these kinds of situations - and that is a problem that needs to be addressed.