Disruptions Are the True Test of an Airline

Matt Graham
The Business & First Class check-in queue at Zurich Airport
Any airline can look good when things go right. The true test is when things go wrong. Photo: Matt Graham.

Last week I flew with Jetstar from Canberra to Melbourne. The low-cost carrier wouldn’t normally be my first choice of airline, but this flight was absolutely perfect.

My Jetstar flight ran on time, my checked bag turned up at the other end and, thanks to my Qantas status, I was able to use the Qantas lounge in Canberra.

For less than the cost of a standard Economy ticket on Qantas, Virgin or Rex, I was even able to get a Jetstar ticket with a Max Bundle. This meant I could choose an extra legroom seat (which happened to come with a shadow), got a snack on board and earned Qantas points & status credits at the Flexible Economy rate.

So, does this mean Jetstar is a great airline and I should fly them more often? Perhaps, but not necessarily…

If this was my experience every time I flew Jetstar, I would seriously have to question why it’s worth paying more to fly other full-service airlines. But it’s easy for any airline to look good when everything happens to go right. The true test of an airline is how often things go wrong, and much more importantly, how well the airline handles inevitable disruptions.

Disruptions are a normal part of travel, but the recovery matters

Delays, cancellations, lost baggage, downgrades, broken seats, catering failures and malfunctioning in-flight entertainment… they can happen when flying on any airline.

Disruptions like delays and cancellations are known in the airline industry as Irregular Operations, or “IRROPS” for short. Often these things happen for reasons beyond the airline’s control – they’re just part of the risk of travel. Things don’t go right 100% of the time, and that’s to be expected.

But there can be a huge difference in how airlines deal with these issues. Some communicate very well, treat their passengers fairly and try to fix any problems that arise quickly, minimising the disruption to their passengers. Other airlines do a terrible job of this.

I’ve had my fair share of issues with Jetstar over the years, and came to realise a while ago that the cheap fares came at a price. If something went wrong, which seemed to happen more frequently than with other Australian airlines, you couldn’t be sure of getting a fast resolution. Just ask the family that was recently stranded by Jetstar in Bali for 18 days.

But when things go right, Jetstar can be absolutely fine.

The same could be said of Qantas and Virgin Australia. Most of the time, everything works and you’ll have a good flight. But both airlines have dropped the ball a few times this year.

For example, Qantas has left passengers to sleep on airport floors with no communication, abandoned passengers after they missed their international connection and tried to charge customers $3,000 to get rebooked onto another flight to London after their connecting Qantas flight was delayed. Virgin has also had its issues, as have many other airlines around the world. Thankfully, these incidences now seem to be happening less frequently than they did earlier in the year.

In my years of flying, I can recall a couple of disruptions that were handled particularly poorly by the airlines.

American Airlines once left me to sleep on the floor of Raleigh-Durham Airport overnight after I missed my connecting flight, the airport hotel was full and there were no staff available to help at the airport or the call centre. All the airline staff had gone home before my inbound flight landed and I had no idea if I’d been rebooked onto another flight.

I also had a nightmare trip once with TAM Airlines in Brazil where my flight was diverted and I ended up arriving at my destination 17 hours late… on a bus, having received one sandwich and a bottle of water throughout the whole trip.

Both of these disruptions were caused by adverse weather, which is not the airline’s fault. But the communication and recovery were both terrible. In the case of the TAM disruption, I was also lied to multiple times by airline staff.

On the other hand, if an airline communicates clearly and works to minimise the disruption to passengers, IRROPS are far less of a problem. I once had an overnight delay flying with Qantas from Dallas to Sydney which was clearly communicated, with passengers given meal vouchers and put up in hotels for the night. That was handled very well and ended up being quite a positive experience.

What are your most memorable experiences with airline disruptions – both good and bad? You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.

Matt Graham
The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
Matt Graham
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drron Nov 21, 2022 #1

Some time between 2007 and 2012 before I had completely given up on QF they really did excel.

My best example was I was booked to fly home DPO-MEL-MCY after working in Tassie. DPO-MEL was on QF and MEL-MCY was on JQ as it was the only afternoon flight from MEL-MCY.

However that day in April the heavens opened up over Devonport and points west. So all DPO flights were cancelled. Again because we still flew QFi in those days I had reached the heights of SG as well as having LTQC. So I got a ring from QF saying if I could get to LST they would put me on an late afternoon flight. I just got the hospital to arrange a taxi and all was good. So full marks to QF.

Of course the problem then was that I had missed the JQ MCY flight. Went to the JQ desk and they were as useless as...
There was a woman in tears just in front of me as she had come off the LST plane and missed her JQ connection to BNE. There were no more seats that day and her grandmother's funeral was the next morning.

So I took myself and her to the QF service desk and we were both given a ticket on the last QF BNE flight for the night. The JQ tickets were accepted as full payment. So QF went above and beyond.

I would like to be able to read such QF stories again.

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harvyk Nov 21, 2022 #2

Longest delay I've had was 27 hours (back in 2017 from memory). I was meant to fly from BNE-LAX, however the plane broke down and they had trouble getting hold of replacement parts.

In the end Qantas brought another plane up from SYD to do the flight, and our original aircraft remained in BNE.

Look I can't really fault QF (although I say that whilst I spent the day knocking back free booze in the QF Int lounge at BNE). They arranged for a taxi and then hotel for the night, although I'm glad I was flying J as J pax got a room to themselves, where as the solo Y pax where forced to share, plus I had a meal voucher to get dinner.

It would have been nice if they had simply flown plan B up from SYD when it became obvious that the BNE-LAX flight wasn't happening on the day rather than hoping that the original aircraft would still be able to do the flight the next day, however I don't know when the plan B aircraft became available.

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Z Zanzara Nov 21, 2022 #3

Couldn't agree more. Disruptions are a true test.

VA at ZQN has to be my worse experience to date. And I have travelled a lot. A chaotically handled fire alarm evacuation at check-in was a precursor of what was to come… 2-hour delay that steadily got worse and worse.

The VA flight was eventually cancelled because the radio was cactus and no one was available to fix it.

NZ & JQ were checking in side by side to VA, with seats back to MEL to spare. Not a single attempt was made by VA to reaccommodate anyone on those flights.

There was an inept handling agent check in Supervisor (dressed in a VA uniform but not employed directly by them) and other surly staff that were unfortunately well out of their depth. They were clearly poorly trained and had no support.

Passengers from overseas, some of them were no spring chickens and had medical conditions. Others had young children. There was also an escorted small holiday group. Everyone was simply and abruptly told, ‘there are no buses available to take you anywhere else’ and ‘we can’t magic any hotel rooms for you –come back tomorrow. As a favour, we are keeping the Terminal open tonight.’

When asked if the flight would leave and at what time, I was told, ‘nothing has been arranged by the company. We have no information’. The handling agent were unable or unwilling to find a single room or transfer any passengers to other flights still departing that evening for any passengers.

I witnessed one passenger travelling from Italy (with international connections that were going to be missed) being shouted at by check-in staff; probably because he said he was going to lie down in front of the check in desk right then and there. Some Americans were also shouting at staff in clear disbelief. I remember quite clearly them asking, ‘is this is this how you treat your best and also your business class passengers?'

People paid for flights themselves on other airlines or madly scrambled to check out Airbnb, called in favours for friends or relatives, checked if the hotel stay that they had just vacated still had rooms available.

After waiting 5 hours, everyone was offered a $6 refreshment voucher from check in staff. These were all handwritten by staff and later increased to $35.

I was a platinum frequent flyer at the time and was travelling with another. I found a hotel. My travelling partner and many others bought tickets on JQ. Many passengers had to sleep on the Airport floor. An NZ check-in agent watching the dramas commented to me and said that whenever there was a technical problem or delay with VA it was always the same & badly handled.

Early the next day or very, very later that night, I received an SMS with flight information for the next day. A new flight had been arranged.

I turned up to travel back to MEL via SYD. As a goodwill gesture to everyone that had not bought a ticket out of there were given a letter apologising and offering a $200 VA voucher or 20,000 Velocity points.

After the way I was treated it became crystal clear to me that airline loyalty is just basically marketing mixed with a huge dollop of lip service. I subsequently no longer bothered always blindly booking VA as I had before this incident. I stupidly thought VA would look after me a bit better as a platinum ff. How naive.

I claimed my hotel stay from VA when it occurred. That was in 2018. It was only partially refunded. Quite out of the blue and rather unbelievably, 3 years later I was contacted by VA and they reimbursed the remaining amount. I still never blindly book VA or any other airline I have status with.

The worse episode of delayed customer service though was told to me by colleagues who approached UA after 2 days of cancelled flights to MEL from LAX. They were told by staff to ‘back off or we call the police!’

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BCons Nov 21, 2022 #4

The Chilean volcano eruption in June 2011 was a big disruption for flights in Tas due to the ash cloud that was circling the southern oceans. QF and JQ (it was nearly all JQ by then, but thats a gripe for another time) announced they had stopped flying to Tas altogether, they were risk-averse after the Nov 2010 near-loss of an A380 near Singapore... So that left visiting family suddenly looking for a way out of Tas, and me trying to shuffle things for a business trip to SIN and elsewhere. That trip was to be Hba to Syd and then off to Sin, all with QF.

That eve my T/A found one seat on a VA flt from LST to Mel that wud just give me time to catch a QF flt to Sin. An extra fare, but otherwise leaving Mel with QF would be the same day/similar timing as original sched. So early next morning, in frost and a bit of fog, we set off for Launceston by car. Managed to get to the airport OK, my cousins went on to Devonport and the ferry, and I waited for fog to clear so the VA flt could land. While waiting I got a call from the T/A to say QF wanted to charge an additional $800-odd for the changes to my Itin.

The changes were: A) not flying me to Syd at all and offering no refund, and B) taking me to Sin from Mel rather than Syd, a flight thats about an hour shorter.

That was it for me and QF I'm afraid..

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OZDUCK Nov 21, 2022 #5

The only major disruption I have faced was when we were flying to Helsinki on AY after getting a cheap ScootBiz (as was) flight Per - Sin and overnighting in a Holiday Inn Express in Katong. The flight was due to depart at around 23:30. At about 07:30 we got an e-mail to say that the flight was cancelled and to contact Finnair for advice.

The Singapore Finnair number was not answering and I think it was probably a number that was only manned when check-in was open. I tried twitter without success and so phoned Finland. Initially we were offered seats on a CX flight to Hong Kong and then onwards to Helsinki on CX. I asked for confirmation that they were J seats and there was a sudden - oh! The operator put us on hold and then we we were offered flights on QR via Doha and then onto Helsinki in J. The first flight left about 2 hours earlier than our scheduled AY flight but we were due to arrive in Hel within about half of an hour of the originally scheduled arrival time on AY.

It took a couple of hours of stress but in the end AY came through. At one stage they said that they would pay for an extra night in a Singapore hotel if flights could nor be arranged. We actually profited by the change as we got seats 1A and 1E on a near new A350 from Sin to Doh and then flew on one of their A320's with lie flat seats on the Doh - Hel leg. Without being unfair it is safe to say that the Finnair 'express' night time meals served all on one tray came nowhere near to matching the catering on either of the QR flights. After that experience we happily booked a number of QR flights originating in Singapore.

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RooFlyer Nov 21, 2022 #6

Disruptions are the true test of an Airline's management.

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k kgreenuq Nov 23, 2022 #7

Disruptions Are the True Test of an Airline is an article written by AFF editorial staff:

View image at the forums


Disruptions Are the True Test of an Airline

The true test of an airline is how often things go wrong, and much more importantly, how well the airline handles inevitable disruptions.

View image at the forums


www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

Two-sector flights with Jetstar are almost certain to cause palpitations. If the first flight's late (that never happens, right?) you're a good chance of missing the second flight, as you have to collect luggage and then check in again. After several disasters, I book only direct flights with Jetstar.

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SeatBackForward Nov 23, 2022 #8

Disruptions are the true test of an Airline's management.

And this was the big issue with the Layoffs during Covid. Out walked decades of experience that knew how to deal with disruptions, who knew what where the tricks that training did not teach, or that only experience can provide in how to deal with this. You can't train for this, and it will take years and years of staff who stick around to return to that level of capability.

Running a line down staff costs might suit finance and accounting wizards but the books don't put a $ value on the skills that they are letting go.

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JohnK Dec 11, 2022 #9

I've had a few disruptions over the years.

In my experience QF used to be the best by far at handling disruptions but that's probably biased as I've been Platinum 16 years.

VA and to a lesser extent JQ the worst. VA never had a clue and I think it's worse now.

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Forg Dec 11, 2022 #10

In my experience QF used to be the best by far at handling disruptions but that's probably biased as I've been Platinum 16 years.

I don’t know if they’re treating their Platinums like they used to, but I had two experiences of flying QF with a Platinum … one was giving me a lift to the airport to catch the same flight as him when QF called him as a reminder ‘cos he hadn’t checked-in yet (yes he was late), the other the flight was an hour late so they called him to let him know. You never got that level of attention or information when you were a mere “paying pleb”, with QF … in fact I have a couple of American friends who stick with their Seppo airline schemes because their American sensibilities prefer the way the American airlines bow & scrape even though the American airline product has generally been inferior … ”service” means “servitude” to Americans, I think Strayans often feel a tad uncomfortable with that (I know I do - these people aren’t my inferiors!).

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