D
Deleted member 29185
Guest
As some of you know, I am a FF, but not with QF.
My family has recently endured the sad experience of my father passing away whilst traveling.
Mum and Dad were holidaying in the Kimberleys........actually, holidaying is possibly not the word everyone would use as they were on a remote Wilderness Society station as part of a tour. They love the AU outback more than anywhere in the world (and they've traveled extensively).
Tragically, Dads life came to an abrupt end at 3am on Friday morning, by way of a heart attack whilst doing what he loved, camping in the middle of nowhere whilst traveling the vast and remote Aussie outback and his 80 years here on earth and his 57 years with Mum were over.
But I'm not writing this as a eulogy to Dad, but as a thank you to QANTAS for how they dealt with us. Mum and Dad have traveled a lot and know (and dislike) air travel, but have always accepted it as the distasteful but necessary part of exploring this vast world of ours. In recent years, they had both decided to limit their travels to AU and I recall some time ago, trying to suggest a few O/S destinations they had not visited. The response was (as I expected) to point out to me in no uncertain terms that they had visited all the places they wanted to, or intended to and the ones they hadn't, held less than no interest to them...........hard to argue that really. As for the travel experience itself, they tried J class (fully funded) and I recall Mum saying that if that was luxury, they could keep it. In her eyes, it was an overpriced waste of money for a totally repulsive experience that was equally repulsive in Y but at a fraction of the cost! Mum and Dad don't go in for fanfare and I've witnessed money sharks cower after trying to con Mum. With that in mind, it's easy to understand that Mum and Dad were on the cheapest of the discount economy fares BNExPER-BME return with QANTAS.
Unfortunately, things do go wrong in life and that happened to us on Friday morning with Dads passing. The tour company (Outback Spirit...wonderful people) were able to assist with booking a private charter flight to BME for Mum. The Derby police drove 5 hours to deal with the incident (and did so very professionally) and required Mum for the usual formalities for a while and the charter company fitted in to suit. Obviously, our family were keen to get Mum back home to the Sunshine Coast as soon as possible, so QANTAS, though not obliged under any arrangement, altered the discount economy flights BME-PER and arranged for Mum to fly on the first flight to suit her rather changeable circumstances, including waiving her luggage allowance so she could bring back dads luggage as well.
In the meantime, I flew to PER and landed there with just enough time to shower and meet Mum as the wonderful QANTAS staff escorted her off the BME-PER flight. The QANTAS lady who did that, also arranged for access for both of us into the QP and told us she would return before boarding to accompany us to our re-booked PER-BNE flight (the Friday night red-eye). We only had about an 1.5 hours between the BME-PER landing and the PER-BNE taking off, but about a 1/2 hour before the PER-BNE boarding call, the truly superb QANTAS lady returned with 2 new boarding passes for us with a J upgrade! Shortly after, she returned again to accompany us to the plane (first to board) and introduce us to the CSM (Philip) and the lovely crew. We were shown to our business class seats and offered drinks and we very quickly got comfortable.
Given this was closing in rapidly on midnight and my 77 year old Mum had been awake since 3am, briefly trying to help Dad cope, finding assistance when she realized the worst had possibly happened, dealing with the inherent delays associated with the tyranny of remoteness, police questioning, staff and guests sympathy (which was of course appreciated by Mum), a light plane charter flight out of the Kimberleys, the QANTAS BME-PER flight (with an extremely helpful young FIFO worker who helped Mum no end, but had to race off to a party before I could thank him) and two connections, my dear Mum was fast asleep before the meal service rolled out and she slept soundly until lights went on again upon decent into BNE. Sorry Mum, try doing that in zoo class!
Before descent, our wonderful CSM came and had a quick chat with us and shortly later returned with a complementary bottle of QANTAS red to "toast my father with" as he put it. What Philip did not realize at that point, at about 5am in the morning of the 4th of May, somewhere above SEQ, was that day was my fathers birthday...at least it would have been his 80th had he not passed away the day before. So thanks to QANTAS and Philip, we did indeed toast Dad, later that night when the rest of the family had gathered. Most importantly, that kindness shown by the Qantas staff by upgrading us to J, allowed my Mum to get some sleep which was so desperately needed.
My most sincere and heart-felt thanks go to many people on Friday, but most of all to QANTAS, as their compassion and assistance helped turn an emotionally difficult day into a bearable day. Their dedication, professionalism and compassion were so very much appreciated. It is truly humbling to see these qualities not just alive and well, but alive and well in the corporate world of big business, stiff competition and demanding shareholders.
With such great help from total strangers from the tour company, fellow pax, the WA police, the charter company and QANTAS, I'm very much a firm believer in Australia being the greatest country on earth.
Once again, thank you QANTAS!
My family has recently endured the sad experience of my father passing away whilst traveling.
Mum and Dad were holidaying in the Kimberleys........actually, holidaying is possibly not the word everyone would use as they were on a remote Wilderness Society station as part of a tour. They love the AU outback more than anywhere in the world (and they've traveled extensively).
Tragically, Dads life came to an abrupt end at 3am on Friday morning, by way of a heart attack whilst doing what he loved, camping in the middle of nowhere whilst traveling the vast and remote Aussie outback and his 80 years here on earth and his 57 years with Mum were over.
But I'm not writing this as a eulogy to Dad, but as a thank you to QANTAS for how they dealt with us. Mum and Dad have traveled a lot and know (and dislike) air travel, but have always accepted it as the distasteful but necessary part of exploring this vast world of ours. In recent years, they had both decided to limit their travels to AU and I recall some time ago, trying to suggest a few O/S destinations they had not visited. The response was (as I expected) to point out to me in no uncertain terms that they had visited all the places they wanted to, or intended to and the ones they hadn't, held less than no interest to them...........hard to argue that really. As for the travel experience itself, they tried J class (fully funded) and I recall Mum saying that if that was luxury, they could keep it. In her eyes, it was an overpriced waste of money for a totally repulsive experience that was equally repulsive in Y but at a fraction of the cost! Mum and Dad don't go in for fanfare and I've witnessed money sharks cower after trying to con Mum. With that in mind, it's easy to understand that Mum and Dad were on the cheapest of the discount economy fares BNExPER-BME return with QANTAS.
Unfortunately, things do go wrong in life and that happened to us on Friday morning with Dads passing. The tour company (Outback Spirit...wonderful people) were able to assist with booking a private charter flight to BME for Mum. The Derby police drove 5 hours to deal with the incident (and did so very professionally) and required Mum for the usual formalities for a while and the charter company fitted in to suit. Obviously, our family were keen to get Mum back home to the Sunshine Coast as soon as possible, so QANTAS, though not obliged under any arrangement, altered the discount economy flights BME-PER and arranged for Mum to fly on the first flight to suit her rather changeable circumstances, including waiving her luggage allowance so she could bring back dads luggage as well.
In the meantime, I flew to PER and landed there with just enough time to shower and meet Mum as the wonderful QANTAS staff escorted her off the BME-PER flight. The QANTAS lady who did that, also arranged for access for both of us into the QP and told us she would return before boarding to accompany us to our re-booked PER-BNE flight (the Friday night red-eye). We only had about an 1.5 hours between the BME-PER landing and the PER-BNE taking off, but about a 1/2 hour before the PER-BNE boarding call, the truly superb QANTAS lady returned with 2 new boarding passes for us with a J upgrade! Shortly after, she returned again to accompany us to the plane (first to board) and introduce us to the CSM (Philip) and the lovely crew. We were shown to our business class seats and offered drinks and we very quickly got comfortable.
Given this was closing in rapidly on midnight and my 77 year old Mum had been awake since 3am, briefly trying to help Dad cope, finding assistance when she realized the worst had possibly happened, dealing with the inherent delays associated with the tyranny of remoteness, police questioning, staff and guests sympathy (which was of course appreciated by Mum), a light plane charter flight out of the Kimberleys, the QANTAS BME-PER flight (with an extremely helpful young FIFO worker who helped Mum no end, but had to race off to a party before I could thank him) and two connections, my dear Mum was fast asleep before the meal service rolled out and she slept soundly until lights went on again upon decent into BNE. Sorry Mum, try doing that in zoo class!
Before descent, our wonderful CSM came and had a quick chat with us and shortly later returned with a complementary bottle of QANTAS red to "toast my father with" as he put it. What Philip did not realize at that point, at about 5am in the morning of the 4th of May, somewhere above SEQ, was that day was my fathers birthday...at least it would have been his 80th had he not passed away the day before. So thanks to QANTAS and Philip, we did indeed toast Dad, later that night when the rest of the family had gathered. Most importantly, that kindness shown by the Qantas staff by upgrading us to J, allowed my Mum to get some sleep which was so desperately needed.
My most sincere and heart-felt thanks go to many people on Friday, but most of all to QANTAS, as their compassion and assistance helped turn an emotionally difficult day into a bearable day. Their dedication, professionalism and compassion were so very much appreciated. It is truly humbling to see these qualities not just alive and well, but alive and well in the corporate world of big business, stiff competition and demanding shareholders.
With such great help from total strangers from the tour company, fellow pax, the WA police, the charter company and QANTAS, I'm very much a firm believer in Australia being the greatest country on earth.
Once again, thank you QANTAS!
