Qantas passengers forced to sleep on floor of DFW

[parsonstrish]

This happened to one of my qf8 flights. Went technical, passengers were given accommodation, bus return to accommodation. Staff there in my hotel mid next morning with details of return flight. I think airport staff given advance notice to arrange everything. Chaotic but managed, feel for Wednesday passengers.

 

[Franky]

But coming back to original post. I don’t think most passengers were “forced to sleep on the floor”. I can’t imagine all the hotels nearby were full.

Hotel Tonight is one App that covers late bookings, though in this case that would have been a big ask…

 

[levelnine]

The problem with all of the posters in this thread claiming that they are smart enough to organise their own accommodation is that if you do that you may not get notice of when the flight is rescheduled. When I've been stranded in an outstation, details of the rescheduled flight were slipped under the door in the middle of the night. This information was not posted anywhere else. The assumption seemed to be that, if you didn't wait around for the airline-organised accommodation, you had abandoned your ticket.

 

[dajop]

The problem with all of the posters in this thread claiming that they are smart enough to organise their own accommodation is that if you do that you may not get notice of when the flight is rescheduled. When I've been stranded in an outstation, details of the rescheduled flight were slipped under the door in the middle of the night. This information was not posted anywhere else. The assumption seemed to be that, if you didn't wait around for the airline-organised accommodation, you had abandoned your ticket.

In 2022 we, in general, and the airline industry specifically, should in no way be reliant on slips of paper under the door!!

The whole industry should have some technology to deal with flight interruptions, and app that people can self serve, and therefore only require staff to manage those without access to such technology (because of lack hardware, data or ability).

But that would cost money!

Also on the topic of money, it’s interesting that QF does not have some arrangements in place at the biggest hub of it second most important (or arguably most important) commercial airline partner. Assuming this is also cost related.

 

[craven morehead]

Not Jetstarised. Alanised. Remade in his image.

Had to read "Alanised" twice

 

[RooFlyer]

they are at the hub of a major partner and couldn't seemingly get them to assist with Customer Service???? Prob very few actual QF staff at the outstation, but that shouldn't matter that much - specially at the AA hub imo.

I recall this being discussed a couple of times previously on AFF. A 'major' airline, at a major destination (also a major partner hub) should have plans and contingencies in place to handle irrops such as this. Of course that would cost Qantas a bit as it would inevitable mean paying someone extra (or maybe more) to work the problem to sort things for their customers. So no, not done by Qantas. "Oh, join that massive queue over there and you might get something, else sleep over there and when we are ready, we may or may not take you home".

"Alanised" - should join the lexicon as a synonym for 'enhanced'.

 

[UP4014]

The problem with all of the posters in this thread claiming that they are smart enough to organise their own accommodation is that if you do that you may not get notice of when the flight is rescheduled. When I've been stranded in an outstation, details of the rescheduled flight were slipped under the door in the middle of the night. This information was not posted anywhere else. The assumption seemed to be that, if you didn't wait around for the airline-organised accommodation, you had abandoned your ticket.

They use the contact details the passenger provides, normally text. Although when driving around LA once I did received a phone call from QF Sydney saying I didn't need to go the airport and should check in 9am for 11am departure the next day for a daylight flight. I did much prefer the daylight flight, far more civilised.

 

[jpp42]

If they do, does this mean they wear other airline uniforms when they do checkin for those airlines?

This depends on the contract - most airlines with a single daily departure just use contract staff that wear a generic uniform and might have a name badge with the airline logo, but more often then not the name badge just lists their contractor (SATS, DNATA, etc), or even another airline (in the past, I think QF's JFK flights were handled by AA staff in AA uniforms). This is because the staff may be reassigned to a different airline for the next part of their shift. For some airlines with multiple departures at an outstation, they could be asked to wear an airline uniform if they are going to be working that airline's desk for an entire shift - some of the Asian airlines do this at SYD. I haven't seen contractors in Qantas uniforms however, as in most of their outstations QF don't have multiple flights all day - only exception could be NZ but Qantas has its own subsidiaries there so it's a separate matter.

Note - often there is a station chief who is a full time airline employee and that person usually does wear a proper uniform, distinguishing themselves from the contract staff.

 

[YesYouCanCanCan]

Hi Guys,
I was on that flight. I was googling the news stories about it and saw this forum.
I'm currently sitting in Sydney Airport Domestic for my connection to Adelaide. Because we missed the 8:40 connection to Adelaide, and Qantas cancelled the 10:40, then filled the 13:10 one with the cancelled people, I am on the 3:40pm flight. So another casual 6 hours of sitting around. Thanks to Qantas, I will get home 32 hours later than intended at this rate.

The problem with all of the posters in this thread claiming that they are smart enough to organise their own accommodation is that if you do that you may not get notice of when the flight is rescheduled. When I've been stranded in an outstation, details of the rescheduled flight were slipped under the door in the middle of the night. This information was not posted anywhere else. The assumption seemed to be that, if you didn't wait around for the airline-organised accommodation, you had abandoned your ticket.

On this - by the time we had deplaned, and retreived our luggage, it was 4am in Dallas. In theory we were flying again at 11:30am, checkin something like 8am. The Hyatt in the terminal was fully booked (and like 400 USD a night). So there was not much point calling hotels in the area and ubering over for what would end up being a 2 hour sleep. That drove my decision to just stay there.

Of course, the rest of the articles as written then played out - Qantas did not show up at 8am to check us in and provided no information via the app, or in person as to what was going on until appx 12:30.

 

[encryptededdy]

@YesYouCanCanCan welcome to AFF, and thanks for your first-hand account of what happened.

Was getting your domestic connection rebooked mostly seemless? I hear QF had issues yesterday so hopefully they've resolved them for today.

 

[jpp42]

In theory we were flying again at 11:30am, checkin something like 8am.

This seems to be one of the biggest mistakes in this debacle, telling passengers to return to the airport so early. I wonder if Qantas originally thought they had another crew available to operate the flight at this timing? Because there clearly wouldn't be enough rest for the original crew with this timing. The rules are complicated but I gather they would have been on-duty for some time while the problem was being worked on, and therefore would need at least 10 hours off duty before they would be fit to set off again.

 

[Happy Dude]

Geez. QF can't seem to win one. As a traveller who generally avoids QF this just reinforces that decision. But as a QF shareholder.....

 

[UP4014]

Geez. QF can't seem to win one. As a traveller who generally avoids QF this just reinforces that decision. But as a QF shareholder.....

As a shareholder you should be pleased.

As a traveller, have seen armed security physically holding airline passengers back from international check in counters in South America, so while a shambles I just go with the flow these days and make the most of a problem I can't control.

 

[Happy Dude]

As a shareholder you should be pleased.

As a traveller, have seen armed security physically holding airline passengers back from international check in counters in South America, so while a shambles I just go with the flow these days and make the most of a problem I can't control.

I'm looking for capital gains and dividends. This type of thing will be added to the long list of 'headwinds' trotted out by Alan Joyce in front of the cameras when explaining to the market why profits are down and no dividend. To which the market will respond by whacking the share price. Share price of travel stocks should be booming given the demand for travel, and I love the rusted-on QF travellers and the prices they're prepared/forced to pay.

 

[CaptJCool]

Was going to say Qantas and Dallas already participated in IROPS planning

Travel disruption cost airlines and passengers tens of billions | PhocusWire

Travel commerce platform Switchfly becomes the latest travel technology company offering to help airlines solve costly Irregular Operations (IROP) incidents by making passenger re-accommodation faster

www.phocuswire.com

for those who want to explore every detail ...

https://amadeus.com/documents/en/airlines/white-paper/shaping-the-future-of-airline-disruption-management.pdf

https://amadeus.com/en/insights/research-report/shaping-the-future-of-airline-disruption-management-irops

short articles but actually insightful

The curse of IROPs (A gentle overview, part 1) - Datascience.aero

datascience.aero

The curse of IROPs (part 2) - Datascience.aero There were OTHER solutions however unpalatable they may have been to QF, THE PAX ought to have been placed FIRST. (Eg
Attempts to rebook the passenger onto another suitable flight by the following hierarchy:
· Subsidiaries – airline used for rebooking in the same corporate family
· Joint venture partners – if two airlines have an agreement to pursue a market jointly, then re-accommodating a passenger on a partner carrier helps both
· Alliance partners
· Codeshare partners
· Bilateral agreement partners
· Airlines not competing with the original booked airline
· Competitors to the original booked airline.

So is it a case of out of practice or single point of failure (QF one flight a day v offloading to competitors who are on the bottom of the priority order for “getting PAX home on time.

or just a case of blind optimism ?

 

[jpp42]

There were OTHER solutions however unpalatable they may have been to QF, THE PAX ought to have been placed FIRST.
[...]
So is it a case of out of practice or single point of failure (QF one flight a day v offloading to competitors who are on the bottom of the priority order for “getting PAX home on time.

or just a case of blind optimism ?

I don't agree that rebooking onto other flights/carriers was a reasonable option in this case. It's not one or two pax who have misconnected, it's an entire 787 load that would need to be reaccommodated, which is an incredible amount of work for whoever has to handle it. There are no other flights to Australia from DFW on any carrier, except for Qantas the next day, and no domestic flights out to other ports like LAX or SFO until much later in the morning. The international flights from those US west coast ports to Australia wouldn't leave until the next evening, a timing driven by SYD's curfew but tends to work out for other destinations too, due to connections on both ends.

Also, never mind that US domestic flights tend to operate at very high load factors these days, so getting an entire 787 load of people to LAX/SFO (even HNL?), wouldn't be easy, even if there were seats available onward to Australia. And most importantly, none of that gets the passengers to Australia any earlier than simply waiting until the plane in DFW was fixed and crew available again. So yes, it was way cheaper for Qantas to get the pax to wait until the same plane could be used again, but it was also the only reasonable option here if you actually look at the passenger point of view (many who have chosen DFW to avoid places like LAX to start with). I think you need to focus on why the process of getting accommodation, and the communication on the revised departure time, didn't work any better.

 

[SeatBackForward]

"Alanised" - should join the lexicon as a synonym for 'enhanced'.

Dibs on Alananced

 

[UP4014]

I'm looking for capital gains and dividends. This type of thing will be added to the long list of 'headwinds' trotted out by Alan Joyce in front of the cameras when explaining to the market why profits are down and no dividend. To which the market will respond by whacking the share price. Share price of travel stocks should be booming given the demand for travel, and I love the rusted-on QF travellers and the prices they're prepared/forced to pay.

I respectfully disagree, this type of thing will be forgotten by next month.

 

[YesYouCanCanCan]

@YesYouCanCanCan welcome to AFF, and thanks for your first-hand account of what happened.

Was getting your domestic connection rebooked mostly seemless? I hear QF had issues yesterday so hopefully they've resolved them for today.

Well, it was seamless in that they just gave me a boarding pass for a flight that was 7 hours later than the one I was supposed to be on and said "that's all we can do".

The lady at the checkin managed to restrain herself from actually giving me the middle finger, she just left the implication there.

The computer was working fine.

 

[Happy Dude]

I respectfully disagree, this type of thing will be forgotten by next month.

From the travellers' psyche yes, but you may need to explain to me why shareholders would be laughing?