Interesting to read everyone's experiences, even though the thread seems to have gone more down the line of "recount the story of your delay / cancellation and how well / badly QF treated you"
It sounds like on average 45k points as compo is a pretty good outcome, assuming I value QF points at a couple of cents each (which I do). I wonder if I got points rather than cash (given cash seems to be more common based on the responses) because it was a points booking initially? And I do find myself wondering what more would have been possible if I'd pushed back at the initial 45k points offer (not that I would have, or will).
Seeing as everyone is recounting their
service experience in cases of delay / cancellation, I guess I mind as well add some more detail about mine, especially the reason for my "QF staffer who was meant to be landside to hand out taxi vouchers to F pax / WPs wasn't there, which pretty much sums up the response from QF after the cancellation on that day - but that's another story" comment.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm not the entitled or demanding sort, and am generally pretty patient - so the reality was probably worse than I describe it below
I also appreciate that cancellations can and do happen sometimes, and there's really nothing an airline like QF (i.e. an airline with a good maintenance program / record) can do about them on most occasions - but what counts is the response to them.
Anyway: the initial parts of the delay were handled really well - timely updates, good information about what the problem actually was (aircon fault), and after the second (?) delay the pilot and CSM actually visited the F lounge to personally chat to any affected pax who wanted to ask questions - I was particularly impressed with this last step.
Things started to go downhill after the pilot + CSM visit though: updates stopped being timely (e.g. several instances of the flight being re-delayed, and given a new departure time, well
after the previously scheduled departure time has passed) and the flow of info stopped (e.g. no more updates about why the problem was proving harder to resolve than initially suspected).
Once the flight was eventually cancelled though, all hell broke loose (well, in a relative sense - as much as hell can break loose in the F lounge / dealing with a relatively small number of F pax and WPs
). There were about 25 pax in the F lounge on the flight, who of course after the cancellation was announced all rushed the service desk wanting to know what would happen next. A whole bunch of stuff was handled badly at this point:
- the lounge staff had no idea, not even in a general sense, how the pax would be accommodated for the night / rebooking on QF /etc would work until the duty manager showed up >20 minutes later, which I found interesting given cancellations can't be
that uncommon, and there must be standard procedures for handling them.
- there was, of course, a rush of pax wanting to rebook onto the one other OW flight SYD-HKG that day (on CX) - but the lounge staff handled these requests first-come-first-serve rather than giving any priority based on status or class of service. This didn't affect me personally as my preference was to fly F the next day, but it infuriated a bunch of the other pax (and rightly so, I'd suggest).
- probably most importantly, none of the lounge staff took charge of the situation - between pax wanting to rebook the same day on CX, pax wanting to know when they'd be rebooked on QF, non-local pax wanting to know where they'd stay overnight, local pax wanting to know whether they should go home or not, etc, etc, it was about as chaotic as a group this size can get. Someone from QF needed to "take charge" and
announce the answers to these questions (even if the answer was "we don't know, but we'll let you know as soon as we know") so everyone got the memo - no one did this, so instead the lounge staff got swamped and spent the next 30 minutes answering the same questions over and over again one-on-one. Interestingly, this continued even after the duty manager arrived... I would have expected him, at least, to take charge.
The above are just a couple of examples, but it really was
chaotic for 30+ minutes. I'm sure the situation was probably far worse outside the F lounge, but given the high staff to pax ratio in our group the handling of the situation was awful (i.e. I'm sure we weren't badly off in the grand scheme of things, but very badly off compared to what I'd think would be a normal response for F / WP). Everyone was confused, most were angry, and it would have been very easy to avoid most of this if the situation had just been handled...
better.
Even one the duty manager arrived, the situation didn't really improve. The non-local pax were eventually told "you're going to the Sofitel overnight", but nothing else. We were lead to customs and told to go through, and there'd be a dedicated QF staffer on the other side to assist F/WP, provide more info, hand out taxi vouchers, etc... except no one was there, except a 200+ person queue of Y/J non-WP pax being "serviced" by one lone QF staffer.
Myself and a couple of the other F lounge pax had kind've banded together, and while we knew we were heading to the Sofitel, we knew nothing else, and none of us had been in a similar situation before so we didn't know what to do (i.e. whether we could or should just go, etc). We ended up joining the giant queue for about 20 minutes before I spotted another QF staff member and approached to ask. This gentleman was great - he was actually only there assisting another wheelchair-bound passenger from another flight, but once done with that he was kind enough to chat to me and radio someone to ask what we were meant to do - he didn't get a solid answer, but eventually advised us just to hop in a cab to the hotel.
So, we did that, and arrived at the Sofitel 20 minutes later, only to be told by the check-in agents that they had no idea who we were (i.e. no from from QF had called). This was a couple of hours after the cancellation. They eventually let us check-in as long a provided personal credit cards, but couldn't advise what we were meant to do for meals or anything else. We just assumed reasonable meals would be included, but this was never actually confirmed - I actually asked again a few hours later (5+ hours after the cancellation) and was told QF
still hadn't advised them of who we were, why we were there, etc (I assume they did at some point as none of us were charged for the stay - but still, nothing after 5 hours?).
That was about the end of the saga - although the icing on the cake was needing to make multiple phone calls to QF later in the evening to find out whether I'd been rebooked, onto what flight, etc. I would have expected QF to be the ones
making the calls at least to their F pax, let alone making them jump through hoops.
I know the all of above isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things - we were eventually fed, watered, housed, and delivered to our destination the next day. But it really was several hours of complete confusion and frustration, made up of lots and lots of little things being handled badly, which words don't quite adequately describe.
I'll sum this all up by saying that all of the above is deliberately "through the lens" of what I think a paid F pax would reasonably expect, as that is/was my "benchmark" given I was travelling in F. In reality, my expectations are lower when I'm travelling on points, so all-in-all while it was frustrating, and despite my complaints, I rapidly got over it and certainly don't hold a grudge about it - and basically just regard all of the above story as a curiosity / set of discussion points. But, I must say that if I'd
paid for my F ticket then I would have been livid, which is why I've laid out all the little issues above in detail as I found it an interesting scenario to consider (how I'd have reacted if paid F). Certainly many other F and J pax (all WPs)
were very angry (much more than I was, and well beyond just frustrated at the cancellation itself) - talking to a bunch of other pax at the hotel that evening, it was pretty apparent that QF unfortunately managed to
severely piss off a lot of high-value customers that day.
As you know, this flight experienced a rolling and ultimately overnight delay due to mechanical issues. However the frustration and inconvenience is fully appreciated. I'm glad we were able to look after you during these difficult circumstances, and that you're happy with the subsequent handling.
Looks like I inadvertently created a bunch of work following up people's complaints here Red Roo - sorry, not my original intent! The experience was far from perfect (as recounted above), but overall QF did look after me reasonably well, and I appreciated it.
