QF2 Passengers Stranded in Dubai

[RooFlyer]

The think that annoys me is airlines and other large businesses we deal with collect our personal/comms info assiduously (and these days before they speak with you about something they usually ask you to check these) and yet when that info should be used for what should be a main purpose, its usually not. The airlines use this info only when they want something from you, not when you want something from them (info).

As for contingency, elements which might be in place by a major international airline are:

1. SMS or e-mail comms.

* For each flight, combine pax mobile #s and/or e-mails into a form ready to send a blanket message in case of incident / delay (this of course would have to be preceded by change in T&Cs and/or acceptance of each pax to receive such a SMS or e-mail) ;

* This could be prioritised time-wise by status, cabin etc if they like ;

* There would be a variety of messages ready, depending on incident / location (yes, this would be somewhat complex, but I'm sure the company is sophisticated enough to manage it)

* the first one in something like this case would say something like "Flight XX delayed, due to xx_X, please await follow-up SMS to follow within XX minutes:

* Then, maybe more tailored with info on what to call, who to see etc.

... the point is communication. if people hear nothing, they get annoyed, or more. Even a SMS conveys that the airline knows about them and is working on something.

2. Be ready for a major incident.

Goodness knows, these happen regularly for a variety of accident / tech reasons. There is simply no excuse for an airline not being able to mobilise, within an hour at one of their destination airports, or 30 mins at major airports

* Staff (more than one!) or contracted staff, in person, in contact with affected pax and who has a generic response ready, such as contact with hotels to activate or initiate whatever processes happen when a bunch of hotels are required;

* Staff or contractors in a local call centre giving basic info to affected pax, even if that is "we have no direct info, please confirm your contact details and you'll get a message (see above) when its available;

* and so on.

I'm not saying this is easy, or fool proof, but surely to goodness the likelihood of a large plane breaking down and stranding passengers is large enough (unfortunately) for airlines to be ready and not to seem like deer caught in the headlights when it happens. Communications these days is easy and all it needs is for the airlines to use the channels available to them to assist pax when they really need it.

Dubai seems especially prone to non/unhelpful staff. I imagine there is some sort of services agreement in place, but EK just doesn't seem to mobilise the staff when they are needed for QF.

 

[RooFlyer]

2 cents worth from me.
The CEOs personal life is irrelevant. Their role is strategic and as an employee I'd be quite happy if they stayed out of operations. As for the Richard Branson comments I'm not aware of any evidence that it was a stage managed PR opportunity with creepy references to women involved so I don't see the connection.

No one here appears to have sufficient information on why the 2nd plane delay played out the way it did. I think the least likely scenario is to get the CEO back to Australia. I'm sure they could have found other solutions to get one person back. We don't know what the passenger composition of the first flight was and there may have been reasons to get them to Australia as quickly as possible. Frankly I'm quite happy with the decision to get the passengers who travelled earlier here for new years.

It seems to me that the reports indicated Qantas did a reasonable job of informing passengers of what they knew. This is obviously a personal perspective and I wasn't an economy passenger without status sitting at the gate in Dubai (you have my sympathy). Delays are part of flying and I've never understood the angst it causes people. I'm happy to fly when the people that know something about it say the chances are good of getting up and down. It seems everyone was provided with food and shelter.

Sometimes stuff happens. Social media provides an easy way for people to whine about about anything and create a reinforcing view of the scale or nature of their issue. In reality everyone safely got where they wanted, didn't starve and have an interesting story for the next time they are out to dinner.

I agree the CEO was irrelevant to the story. If he wanted to 'fly ahead' there would have been numerous channels available to him.

However to not understand the angst delays in flights causes people I think is very strange. I never fly international with less than a 24 hr buffer to something time sensitive at the destination such as a meeting, tour etc. However many people don't have that choice, either because of late notice (eg death/funeral) or full flights on their preferred day or they might buffer in 12 hours and not a whole day.

Would you have some angst if a relative had died and you were flying to make the funeral, and were delayed 24 hrs (an missed the funeral) because the airline bumped you off your plane to accommodate another plane load?

So: any number of reasons to be anxious!

As for "sometimes stuff happens". Sure it does, but when its an all too regular, anticipate-able thing like the breakdown of an A380 away from home, stranding hundreds with little info for a significant time, maybe you should be more understanding of real concerns that people have.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Sometimes stuff happens.

It does. But funny how when 'stuff happens' and a passenger can't make a flight they forfeit their entire fare or have other hefty penalties.

Airlines aren't doing us a favour, they're a commercial entity out to make a profit. Unfortunately controls on airline behaviour are very limited (EU and the DOT to a lesser extent).

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Of course because EK staff wouldn't be busy enough as it was.. and hiring a company takes time. They probably wouldn't be on the ground before the disruption is over..

Qantas and jetstar have an external irrops company on standby in HNL. When we had a delayed flight the company was at the airport in 30 minutes. We were on buses to hotels 30 minutes after that. Food vouchers, phone cards, information - all given during the journey to the hotel. it was perfectly organised.

This is sort of contingency planning is not arranged last minute.

 

[Skyring]

QF32 should have taught the airline that in a crisis, get the passengers on your side, get the story right so every employee is on the same page, and inform, inform, inform. Do not give the passengers a chance to feel they are in an information vacuum.

I was at Edinburgh a couple of years back. Had a flight to Milan, via a connection at Heathrow. Waiting at the gate, we could see our plane, but flight time came and went.

Then we got a communication. In broad Scots. Over the PA system.

By the time we figured out what the hell had been said, we were at the end of the queue for alternates.

 

[Franky]

(In a way I like the idea Qantas moved people around so that everyone was delayed a little rather than one group delayed longer.)

In a way I do too (spread the love), but they then entered the 'cant please all of the people all of the time' scenario which in my view overly compounded the problem from the beginning.

 

[maroonone]

A real quandry - disrupt 400 pax for 48 hours or 800 for 24 hours each without knowing the actual duration of the potential disruption. After some thought I would go for the 400 option - this means 400 people have no disruption and the first 400 have max disruption - 1/2 the number of people disrupted. If the problem had taken longer to solve would we have had rolling 400 pax disruptions for days on end?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

A real quandry - disrupt 400 pax for 48 hours or 800 for 24 hours each without knowing the actual duration of the potential disruption. After some thought I would go for the 400 option - this means 400 people have no disruption and the first 400 have max disruption - 1/2 the number of people disrupted. If the problem had taken longer to solve would we have had rolling 400 pax disruptions for days on end?

The '400 option' is standard industry practice. It was unheard of, until this incident, for an airline to handle an international delay in this way.

 

[coyote25]

The '400 option' is standard industry practice. It was unheard of, until this incident, for an airline to handle an international delay in this way.

In some ways I think it's worst as PAXs on the second plane were on their way home, DXB wasn't a destination but a refuelling point. Getting told your flight was cancelled at your departure point is one thing (although bad that you plane is still flying) but being pulled off an operating flight mid journey I think would feel worse.

Just feels like you are doubling the number of PAX who feel have negative QF sentiments.

Really I would have thought QF would put the 400 delayed PAX on any spare seat going back to AUS and then organise the connecting Dom flight to Sydney (there would likely have been individuals only transiting via Sydney so a different direct flight to BNE might be better!).

 

[ermen]

Interesting article here...
https://mumbrella.com.au/qantas-alan-joyce-seat-qf2-dubai-delay-pr-418032


In particular there's an interesting comment from a Helen Cameron (is she an AFFer?). Strange they will leave with a plane with 50 empty seats

"The whole thing was a complete ballsup from a communication perspective, including Alan Joyce getting off his faulty plane, then getting on the perfectly functioning plane I was bumped off on so he could get to Sydney on time for his New Year’s eve engagement. What a joke the whole thing was, a what a bunch of amateurs Qantas were. I am a Platinum member of Qantas and did not get a single communication from any Qantas staff member at Qantas re what was going on. The following morning I read about a Qantas flight leaving at 11am on the Sydney Morning Herald App and raced to the airport on the 31st December local time to catch it. It left Dubai with at least 50 seats empty on my count on the plane, a shortage of crew members as Qantas “couldn’t find the others” so the ones on board were working overtime to cover for them, and hundreds of people still stranded in Dubai from my orginal flight. Why had they not been told? They could have been on the flight I managed to scramble on with a dash from my hotel. How did I find out? I read about a flight leaving Dubai at 11am that morning on the Sydney Morning Herald on my phone App!! My fellow passengers spent the next two days being rerouted on other airlines and other routes, while Qantas planes had empty seats. The poor young mum next to me had a very overtired child as it had added hours to the flight, and there were many on that plane coming home from Christmases spent with grandparents in Europe and the UK. NO excuses Qantas – you have no staff and no service in place in Dubai. Disrupting 500 people was one thing – everyone accepts planes get grounded. Disrupting a further 500 from a normally proceeding flight after the announcement on the plane that we would be reboarding in an hour, and then leaving us in the dark with no communication at all was a disaster as you then disrupted over a 1000 people and treated the 500 you had bumped off like dirt. We were not told at any stage that we had been bumped off and our luggage removed from our plane in favour of Alan Joyce and other passengers, but were given two hourly new boarding times all day until 4pm. We were then told we would have to collect our luggage. However, Dubai Airport had apparently “lost” the bags. It took 3.5 hours to collect our luggage before we were taken to our hotels. In 45 years of business flying I have NEVER heard of people being bumped off a normally functioning flight in favour of another group of people PLUS of course the CEO of Qantas and the 500 pumped passengers made to wait. You really dropped the ball on this one Q- NO excuses. The concept of code sharing is just a joke, and has reduced Qantas to third world airline status at this hub"

 

[MEL_Traveller]

This looks like, as I mentioned several times up thread, that QF was not doing everything possible to reaccommodate pax on alternative flights. The flight mentioned above went out with 50 empty seats. How many other airlines also went out with empty seats?

There is a possibility with a crew shortage that maybe the flight went out with one door unstaffed. If that is permitted by QF's operating procedures, meaning a section of the aircraft was closed, that might account for the 50 empty seats. But then if some crew made the flight, why didn't the rest of them make it?

 

[Franky]

(Interesting article here...
https://mumbrella.com.au/qantas-alan...elay-pr-418032)

I haven't seen or heard all the complaints from passengers on QF2, but the few I did read seemed upset that they didn't get home for NYE! I'm afraid I don't buy the story that the CEO or anybody else should give up their seat for someone 'desperately in need to get home' when they've been half way around the world on holidays. All passengers had an equal entitlement to get home on time in my opinion. Where the CEO did blow the course was to not do a 'Richard Branson' and lead from the front. It may not have gotten anyone home any earlier, but the fact that he was showing his face may have tempered some of the criticism. Further, most of the comments made early on about his persona was just drivel.

 

[rtyuiop]

I don't think anyone is saying AJ didn't deserve to come home, just that he probably could have improved both passenger outcomes and (mainly) perception by staying.

 

[moa999]

I don't know how he would have improved passenger outcomes by hanging around.

The same Qantas team behind the scenes would have done the same work.

His face might have been comforting to some, others may have tried to punch it.

If he had stayed around you might have got more media coverage, of what was a negative event and always the risk of footage of a passenger getting abusive or crying, neither of which generally reads not particularly well.

 

[Franky]

Your'e right of course, he and QF were damned if they did, and equally damned if they didn't. However, it's a bit like politics, perceptions are everything..

 

[yohy?!]

in the broad scheme of things, AJ not staying in Dubai + QF inconveniencing the 2nd flight made this story stand out from the usual irate delayed pax story - it would have blown over after a few headlines otherwise but these days journalism is all about the content that stands out and drives clicks - QF are usually pretty adept at managing this but the relevant people in Social Media must have been away at the time...

 

[nlagalle]

This looks like, as I mentioned several times up thread, that QF was not doing everything possible to reaccommodate pax on alternative flights. The flight mentioned above went out with 50 empty seats. How many other airlines also went out with empty seats?

There is a possibility with a crew shortage that maybe the flight went out with one door unstaffed. If that is permitted by QF's operating procedures, meaning a section of the aircraft was closed, that might account for the 50 empty seats. But then if some crew made the flight, why didn't the rest of them make it?

Sections of the aircraft aren't "closed" and no door to my knowledge is "unstaffed". Minimum crewing means all doors would have a crew member.

Could have been a weight issue, QF8 as an example never flies full. I doubt they'd fly a plane back with spare seats that could have been filled..

The above doesn't suggest anything that they weren't doing everything..

 

[nlagalle]

Really I would have thought QF would put the 400 delayed PAX on any spare seat going back to AUS and then organise the connecting Dom flight to Sydney (there would likely have been individuals only transiting via Sydney so a different direct flight to BNE might be better!).

Really do you think there would be 400+ spare seats at this time of the year?

 

[RooFlyer]

<snip>

The above doesn't suggest anything that they weren't doing everything..

The 'above' (if you mean the comment from Ms Cameron) emphatically suggests they weren't doing "everything".

Now, I don't believe everything I read of passengers comments in these types of situations and I would apply a liberal dose of anti-enhancement to the quoted comments. But there seems no doubt, no doubt at all, that the communication to passengers was abysmal.

This leaves little room for exaggeration:

I am a Platinum member of Qantas and did not get a single communication from any Qantas staff member at Qantas re what was going on. The following morning I read about a Qantas flight leaving at 11am on the Sydney Morning Herald App and raced to the airport on the 31st December local time to catch it.

Two shockers from Qantas in this incident:

1) Poor to total lack of timely communication with disrupted passengers as to their onward flight arrangements (and even immediate hotel etc arrangements).

I reckon a lot of this would have been down to EK who I imagine are tasked with most of the Qantas logistics at DXB. But its still Qantas management's responsibility to make sure that logistical support is there.


2) The bumping of an entire plane load of pax off a perfectly serviceable aircraft in favour of pax already delayed.

I think I read up-thread that this is almost unheard of (can anyone confirm, authoritatively?) and I hope that the reason will eventually come to light. I've stated up-thread that I don't think the presence of the CEO was relevant to the scenario, but if it wasn't just the CEO but maybe a number of "related parties" travelling on the same flight, then I could well imagine some 'well meaning' functionary thinking "how can I get all these people home ASAP without seeming to favour them?"

 

[eastwest101]

Really do you think there would be 400+ spare seats at this time of the year?

Well we have heard from numerous different sources that ground agents in DXB (or indeed in operations control in SYD) didn't really explore other options about getting people back to Australia until quite a significant delay. Sure its a busy time of year but I might ask that given that Emirates have about 15 daily services to Australian airports and something like 6 daily services to Singapore and Hong Kong then are you saying that there was not a single seat available on any of those services to move people onwards? And that's not even accounting for the other alternatives of Qatar, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines, Ethiad, Thai etc etc. Of course eventually some of these more imaginative options were explored but I think the point remains that this was only at the insistence of and because of negative publicity, but your assertion that there weren't any seats available at all on 15 daily A380 and B777 services (plus many more via SIN) to Australia is straining credulity a little.

I think Qantas can count themselves very lucky that the story wasn't much bigger in Australia - and this was only because of limited journalism resources at this time of year, not by any clever (or indeed even competent) action by Qantas operations or public relations teams. The fact that they couldn't even raise a full complement of crew for one of the QF2 services would seem to indicate that QF have some definite communication issues with IIROPS (especially in DXB).