Last week we were flying to BWT from TSV and had a wonderful day(s) of QF shennanigans but I think some headaches could have been avoided in hindsight.
QF1987 TSV - MEL (Alliance E190) went irrops after pushback due to an avionics fault that rebooting several times wouldn't clear. Fair enough these things happen - so a taxi to a remote bay down past where Rex usually lurk and a walk back to the Qantas Pub. Discussed options with lounge agent as it was clear we wouldn't make our BWT connection if we had to go via BNE. Opted for MEL hotel and BWT morning flight the following day but was over-ruled by Mrs Punter who just wanted to get to our destination. Understandable as we had a 6 month old baby in tow so I went back and had another chat. So here was the big mistake - we asked to be changed to LST (was told no to DPO even though I saw that flight leave half full later that night from MEL
). TSV agent later told me she had personally gone to check that the bags were re-tagged to LST.
So off we trundled to MEL via BNE. Major issues and delays in MEL that evening with ground crew shortages - of course QF wouldn't tell me anything in the lounge so I went and had a chat with a young crew member at the gate. Was told Swissport had big issues with absenteeism, our inbound DH8 had vomit to clean up and they couldn't get a cleaner. The baggage guys were busy with multiple aircraft piling up and our flight had to accommodate a large dog. Eventually they made the decision to offload 10 pax worth of bags without telling us (at that point I would have demanded a hotel!) and off to LST we went. During our many hours of unscheduled Qpub time I had changed my BWT Avis booking to my SIL's name and she kindly got the car and fetched us from LST.
So we land in LST and none of our 4 bags come out. 10 angry pax surrounded the one poor QF worker who was powerless to do anything other than hand out PJ and toiletry packs. Immediate issue for us was taking bub in rental car sans baby seat. Our saviour came in the form of Michael who was lurking out the back in the regional QF pub. A twice redundant QF worker who now contracts as a courier, Michael called up another courier mate who magicked up a car seat from one of his taxis (was a bit manky but got us out of this pickle). He also went on the computer and discovered one of our bags didn't make the transfer in BNE and three were offloaded in MEL for that dog. It was assumed that the oversized car seat bag was the one in BNE (we later discovered it wasn't).
Anyway after a stop in town for baby supplies (we got to Coles 5 mins before closure at midnight) and a visit to the 24 hour K-mart for clothes (who knew Tassie was so progressive) we eventually got to our AirBNB in Penguin at 2am. What an adventure. Three bags were couriered late the next day but the fourth didn't make it until 3 days later; for some reason QF put it on the BNE - LST Jetstar flight two days later. By then we were staying at Corinna on the edge of the Tarkine and our new buddy Michael got to go on a 7 hour scenic drive to deliver the remaining bag.
So if I had to do this again I would definitely not trust QF with a destination change after the trip has commenced, at least not if travelling with an infant and you want a high chance of the luggage actually arriving. You'd think they'd have a process when offloading bags to identify pax with infants but I guess not.
The trip home was also quite terrible. LST - MEL was canx and the rubbish QF automation rebooked us us via a later MEL then on to TSV via SYD. At least the call centre agent (Fiji I think) managed to change us to the direct LST - SYD QFlink flight without stuffing it up. Still got home about 8 hours later than intended due to this and further delays out of SYD. Again, not much fun with a baby in tow. SYD delays a combo of late arriving aircraft and more ground handling issues - we waited on board for >40mins for a pushback tug.
Perhaps we were just very unlucky with this trip but it was quite frustrating when a carefully chosen itinerary to keep an infant happy (and fellow pax's ears) doesn't go to plan. Also was clear the majority of QF staff we met along the way were very nice and helpful but they also felt let down by systemic QF issues; one funny QF lady in MEL even told me to send AJ a nastygram
.
Knowing my luck, they probably don't allow those who have successfully matched before, to match again!
www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au
