Time shifting Alan Joyce does it again - I leave Sydney before I arrive there

[Bob]

You will all be excited at this new "enhancement" from Qantas - London to Toowoomba via Sydney in 12 hours and 45 minutes only - on classic rewards Y class! Unfortunately, I have to leave Sydney the day before I arrive there.



This is obviously a special reward for me after his last effort, where he had me leaving Hong Kong 3 days before arriving there:

I put the details of this previous effort into another thread (104486). In the end, after numerous phone calls to Qantas that resulted in no assistance, I cancelled that flight and rebooked the new flight.
For the new flight, I could get seats to Toowoomba but not Brisbane. Still, that's reasonably close for an international airline that has not matured sufficiently to provide decent customer service. If their systems allow this sort of stupidity to occur in their flight bookings, then they probably still rely on the stars and dead reckoning for navigation. If I end up anywhere in Australia in the 21st Century I will be doing well!

Thank you Alan Joyce. You have now condemned me to yet more wasted hours on the phone to your call centres - or having to cancel my flights AGAIN and hope I can rebook something that vaguely resembles the flight that I wanted. And, how are you going to get me to Toowoomba to pick up my car?

 

[Nitro6333]

I’m assuming your flights through HKG are with CX. This is the problem atm with CX as they aren’t scheduled to fly on some/all of their routes daily so they are rebooking you on the closest available. This same scenario happened to us.
When this happened to us on several legs of on owa I had to do some searching when CX was actually flying to AUS and what routes on what days. I then chose some suitable options and called up cs they were able to let us request rewards seats be made available on selected flights (in one case on a different route SYD-HKG from BNE-HKG) the requests were initially waitlisted and after a short wait they were confirmed.
Do some research and find some flights that will suit you and request the changes.

 

[TheInsider]

Sorry, but why you blaming Qantas, when it's not even a Qantas flight?

 

[Guvner]

Sorry, but why you blaming Qantas, when it's not even a Qantas flight?

Qantas is acting as the travel agent. Would you blame your travel agent if they booked this for you and then refused to help?

 

[RooFlyer]

Sorry, but why you blaming Qantas, when it's not even a Qantas flight?

Because it’s a Qantas booking. As Guvner said how would you feel if your travel agent gave you bookings like this?

Surely it can't be thst hard on their IT to have some sort of iteration in the booking program where you don’t have people leaving somewhere before they arrive?. Is that just too hard? Or here’s another idea for the airline. If they can’t get correct matching bookings after they or another airline they have booked changed or cancelled something, maybe just email the customer and say "we have to talk to you to arrange your bookings" rather just pumping out these mindless impossible to meet schedules? And of course if they had a decent call Centre who could fix things, we wouldn’t actually need to rant and rave about all the hours spent on the phone going round and round in circles. How’s that?

 

[dk4]

Qantas is acting as the travel agent. Would you blame your travel agent if they booked this for you and then refused to help?

When the Titanic went down, the band played on... some employees simply could not acknowledge that an "unsinkable" ship was doing just that, and sinking!

 

[RichardMEL]

While CX created the issue with their cancel, QF's system continues to be broken when it comes to such things.. and so yes, this is on them ultimately even if the flight cancel/change was the result of a partner. How the logic can fail so badly is honestly beyond me (but I've had the same thing happen with QF cancelling their own flights resulting in ridiculous -ve connections so....)

 

[Bob]

Just to clarify. My current flight LHR to Toowoomba is on Qantas metal on one booking. Booked through Qantas website.
The other booking via HKG that I gave up on and had to cancel was booked through Qantas website - but on CX metal.
I thought I would have better luck flying Qantas - the spirit of australia...

 

[Vic]

Sorry, but why you blaming Qantas, when it's not even a Qantas flight?

how do you figure that out? London to Toowoomba - I can't see any operating airline in those pictures

 

[Vic]

Because it’s a Qantas booking. As Guvner said how would you feel if your travel agent gave you bookings like this?

Surely it can't be thst hard on their IT to have some sort of iteration in the booking program where you don’t have people leaving somewhere before they arrive?. Is that just too hard? Or here’s another idea for the airline. If they can’t get correct matching bookings after they or another airline they have booked changed or cancelled something, maybe just email the customer and say "we have to talk to you to arrange your bookings" rather just pumping out these mindless impossible to meet schedules? And of course if they had a decent call Centre who could fix things, we wouldn’t actually need to rant and rave about all the hours spent on the phone going round and round in circles. How’s that?

This... THIS EXACTLY!

They never used to re-book onto flights that depart before you arrive. Then sometime post 2020 there's all these ridiculous automatic rebookings. My one was arriving in Melbourne two weeks after I'd left Melbourne. I never had that pre-2020, in like 1000 itineraries

Someone up above said they just re-book onto the closest flight, which might very well be the case.
But HOW F'ing hard is it to add some logic to the system to do a date/time check and only move to future flights.

I'm going to say someone changed the IT system, and no-one bothered to include basic data validation. Those managers are probably working at their competence level when doing baggage handling, because this error says they're not competent managers.

Edit: in fact, not to disrespect people who do baggage handling for a living. I reckon some of the baggage handlers would've thought about this issue. Maybe a job swap opportunity to improve Qantas overall...

 

[Princess Fiona]

Has nobody on here booked flights online with another airline and had exactly the same ridiculous time travel schedule changes ?

Because I have
BA, AA and quite a few others. It’s computer generated. No human has touched the booking.
This is far from a QF issue let alone anything to do with the CEO.

 

[Guvner]

Because I have
BA, AA and quite a few others. It’s computer generated. No human has touched the booking.
This is far from a QF issue let alone anything to do with the CEO.

How is this not a QF issue? Not buying it. Computer just does what it wants? Somebody at Qantas signs off on it's implementation and functionality. I was going to add testing, but that's obviously not performed. The whole concept of arriving at your destination after departure from your origin was invented by the Wright Brothers. Its not new.

 

[RooFlyer]

Has nobody on here booked flights online with another airline and had exactly the same ridiculous time travel schedule changes ?

Because I have
BA, AA and quite a few others. It’s computer generated. No human has touched the booking.
This is far from a QF issue let alone anything to do with the CEO.

I'm afraid that, no, I can't recall ever having a connection re-scheduled to depart before the preceding flight arrives by an airline other than Qantas. I think I'm up to 1,600 segments now and hand-on-heart, I can't recall it ever happening with anyone else. BUT if it did, as noted above, I'd wager you wouldn't have to try to fix it via many hours on the phone and then 'dealt with' by a call centre like Cape Town!!

It has everything to do with the CEO. He gets the pay, so takes responsibility for the airline's performance (or should take). The buck ends with him, in all ways.

 

[Princess Fiona]

I'm afraid that, no, I can't recall ever having a connection re-scheduled to depart before the preceding flight arrives by an airline other than Qantas. I think I'm up to 1,600 segments now and hand-on-heart, I can't recall it ever happening with anyone else. BUT if it did, as noted above, I'd wager you wouldn't have to try to fix it via many hours on the phone and then 'dealt with' by a call centre like Cape Town!!

It has everything to do with the CEO. He gets the pay, so takes responsibility for the airline's performance (or should take). The buck ends with him, in all ways.

I’m not getting involved in a contest over flight sectors. Not my scene.
But I can assure you that this isn’t a QF specific issue. It never has been.
Completely agree with your other comments about the call centre etc..

Here is a BA example btw

 

[RooFlyer]

I’m not getting involved in a contest over flight sectors. Not my scene.
But I can assure you that this isn’t a QF specific issue. It never has been.
Completely agree with your other comments about the call centre etc..

I only mentioned flight sectors to 'say' that I've quite a bit of experience for it not to happen to me

Do you happen to recall how long / how much trouble it was to fix that rebooking with BA?

 

[Vic]

I can say I've never had it pre-covid with any airline, and only with qantas post-covid. but that's a reflection of lack of flying with other airlines in the last 2 years. I don't recall anyone else mentioning it either.

My experience with AAA-xBBB-CCC bookings pre-covid was MCT was a hard check point. A -1 h 45 min connection time should be prevented by an MCT check. It is really interesting that the BA screenshot has a positive connection time of 1h 45 minutes. Almost like there is a significant fault in the calculation logic.

I've noticed a large number of reports of this type of nonsense change in the last 12 months, especially when it happened to me in March and I went searching for other experiences.

I'm firmly of the opinion that something has been changed in IT land, and no body bothered to implement data validation. Whether that is with the GDS or individual airlines - IDK. But the example from BA suggests maybe GDS. issue.

Either way, what we know is:

1. This nonsense is pretty common with Qantas
2. the call centre operator seemed to know all about the problem when I called up
3. The call centre person said something like "we all know why this happens" - I still don't.
4. Qantas call centres are/were sinking rapidly - as loudly shouted in the media

Therefore, it's a known widespread issue that's adding load to the call centre where there are already widely acknowledged issues. A CEO/Manager leading a business that is operating poorly, in a critical load mode should be pro-actively seeking to fix things. the CEO is out there blaming others, which is a clear acknowledgement that Qantas has problems.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Last year I redeemed points (there was a redemption special on, lowering the points cost) for my daughter to fly to BNE and back from MEL.

She was only going for a week. They cancelled the booked flight up, and changed it to two weeks later while leaving the return for the original date which meant the return was one week before the flight up!

 

[Princess Fiona]

I only mentioned flight sectors to 'say' that I've quite a bit of experience for it not to happen to me

Do you happen to recall how long / how much trouble it was to fix that rebooking with BA?

This booking was a colleague’s not mine and they cancelled.

My experience of the BA call Centre in India is it’s very hard to get through but when you do the operator is reasonably competent.

 

[Tiki]

I have an upcoming flight in May 2023.

BNE LAX 1020 0650 QF (Monday)
LAX PVR 1120 1623 AA (Monday)

So the BNE LAX one was changed to 2215 1845 (Monday) arriving after my flight to PVR departs.
Is this something I can change online without penalty? It's a classic Y award ticket but availability in Y award is not available on either same day or day before. Not sure if I can change this myself and I am afraid to mess with it.

I would prefer to do the BNE LAX on a Sunday and stay overnight in LAX rather than push the PVR flight to Tuesday.
Can this be done online or do I have to make the dreaded phone call?

 

[Scarlett]

To paraphrase an old saying:

“To err is human, but to f#*k things up completely requires QF IT systems and outsourced customer service.”