As I wrote about in another article, there are plenty of things that Qantas does well.
I enjoy flying with Qantas most of the time, and things are improving on the customer service front. Qantas’ new leadership team seems to have taken notice of the airline’s decline in reputation, and they’re working to recover the Australian flying public’s trust. That’s not to say there aren’t still issues.
In this sequel to the article on areas where Qantas excels, I share the things I think Qantas doesn’t currently do particularly well. The purpose of this is not to aimlessly bash the flying kangaroo, but to highlight some areas for improvement and generate some discussion around them.
As with the first article in this series, this is just my personal opinion. You may or may not agree with my points, and that’s perfectly alright! If you think I’m being too harsh, or perhaps there’s something else that you think Qantas does particularly poorly, you’re most welcome to share your opinion in the comments thread linked at the bottom of this article.
Contents
The call centre
Thankfully, the Qantas call centre is no longer the horror show that it was in 2022. Qantas management has taken the need to improve its contact centres seriously, and it has invested in better staff training. But the situation was so bad in 2022 that it will take years to fully fix.
The decline in Qantas’ call centres started long before COVID-19. The problems began after the airline shuttered its Brisbane and Melbourne call centres, consolidating its operations in Hobart, Auckland and Cape Town. Since then, it has opened new locations in Suva and Manila.
The Hobart and Auckland call centres are generally excellent. Their well-trained staff provide accurate information, take ownership of problems, and use the right tools to quickly resolve issues.
Unfortunately, Qantas shed a lot of experienced call centre staff during the pandemic, when demand was much lower. The fast pace of the travel restart in 2022 caught it off-guard. By March 2022, it was back to operating a sizeable international flight network but its call centre couldn’t keep up. Even Platinum members were waiting hours on hold.
Qantas had to do something, so it put on more staff – mainly at the outsourced call centres abroad where labour costs less. In the rush to get more staff on, it trained some so poorly that they were accidentally cancelling customer bookings or giving woefully wrong information – for example, that Qantas doesn’t fly from Sydney to Melbourne after 8am.
Nowadays, the training has improved but I still dread having to ring the call centre. Even as a Platinum member, I rarely ever get through to Hobart or Auckland. It often takes longer than it should to get fairly simple stuff done. I frequently need to call multiple times as the issue wasn’t resolved the first time. If something isn’t urgent, it’s easier to try to get help via Facebook Messenger.
The limitations of Qantas.com
Qantas by no means has the worst airline website out there. I’ve seen plenty that are far worse, and there are plenty of things that you can do on Qantas.com. But there are still plenty of frustrating IT bugs (some of which might actually be features).
If you want to make a multi-city booking, there are any number of error codes you’re likely to come across.
If you want to book a flight departing in one of around 140 countries not supported by the Qantas website, you have to call.
Even things that should be simple don’t always work. I recently tried to redeem a gift voucher online, but the website gave me an error message every time I tried to select a flight. The booking then failed to ticket, so I had to contact Qantas again to get that sorted.
Ultimately, both the call centre and IT issues result in Qantas customers having to waste a lot of their own time before they even get to the airport.
While I’m on this topic, it’s also incredibly frustrating that the Qantas website doesn’t tell you which fare class you’re booking.
International on-time performance
To put it simply, Qantas’ international on-time performance is… not great. Delays are common, and unfortunately, Qantas doesn’t always do a stellar job of handling irregular operations either, particularly at outstations.
The main problems are that Qantas has an ageing international fleet and doesn’t leave much “slack” in its scheduling to recover from delays. (I do wonder if Qantas would have to reconsider its scheduling strategy if Australia had a European-style “pay on delay” compensation scheme…)
Shortage of planes
Under the leadership of former CEO Alan Joyce, Qantas delayed buying new planes in order to increase its short-term profit. That decision is now coming back to bite.
Qantas currently has multiple Airbus A330s out of service with maintenance issues. This is contributing to the poor international on-time performance. It also means Qantas will have to suspend its Melbourne-Delhi flights later this year.
On the domestic front, Qantas doesn’t yet have enough Airbus A220s to replace the Boeing 717s it retired last year. As a result, it’s had to cancel and reschedule a significant number of planned A220 flights.
The A220 is an efficient, highly capable and comfortable aircraft. But it’s taken longer than Qantas planned to get them into service. The flying roo would be in a lot of trouble without all those Embraer E190s it’s wet leasing from Alliance Airlines.
High cancellation rates on the Sydney-Melbourne and Sydney-Canberra routes
Last month, Qantas cancelled 7.8% of Canberra-Sydney flights and 5.7% of Sydney-Melbourne services. Sadly, these figures are fairly typical of Qantas’ cancellation rates on these particular routes over many years.
Some would say that Qantas deliberately schedules more flights in and out of Sydney than it actually intends to operate in order to hoard slots.
Qantas obviously rejects this claim. It says that when it has to cancel flights for operational reasons, it tries to minimise the impact on customers by cancelling flights on busy routes where there are more rebooking options.
Either way, the reality is that there’s a 5-10% chance your Qantas flight from Sydney to Canberra or Melbourne won’t run. You might get rebooked an hour or two later… but the chances are that your carefully selected aisle seat will magically become a middle seat near the toilet, since that’s all that’s available on the new flight at the last minute. There’s also the risk of missing any onward connections.
Some planes need a deep clean
I’m sure Qantas takes any maintenance issues that could affect the safety of flight seriously. But its planes increasingly seem to have cosmetic issues.
On multiple Qantas flights in recent years, I’ve thought to myself that the plane just really needed a deep clean.
Some planes have also been kept in service for extended periods with broken seats or unserviceable toilets.
Qantas will embark on major cabin refurbishment projects for its Airbus A330-200 and Boeing 737-800 fleets in coming years. These can’t come soon enough.
Lack of transparency around downgrades
No airline likes to have to downgrade passengers who’ve paid for a seat in a premium cabin. But occasionally it can happen for a variety of reasons – including, in the case of Qantas, if a deadheading pilot needs the seat.
If an airline can’t provide a seat in the booked cabin, it at least ought to compensate fairly for the downgrade.
Qantas’ previous downgrade compensation policy was grossly unfair to customers. The new policy might be better, but nobody can verify this because Qantas no longer releases it publicly.
Wi-Fi on international flights
It’s 2025, and unlike most of its international competitors, Qantas still doesn’t offer Wi-Fi on most international flights. Where it does, this only works when flying over Australia.
The good news is that Qantas is in the process rolling out Wi-Fi to selected international flights. It will soon offer coverage on A330s and 737s while flying outside of Australian airspace and will eventually add Wi-Fi to its 787s and A380s. The rollout has been repeatedly delayed, but hopefully this happens soon.
Announcing things that just don’t happen
Qantas is a master of generating free publicity through announcements. Unfortunately, some of the things that the airline announces either don’t happen within the advertised timeline, or at all.
For example, Qantas first announced an upgrade of its Auckland lounge in 2018. It’s now March 2025, and work is finally scheduled to begin on this next month.
Another lounge refurbishment announced in 2018 was to the international Business Lounge in Sydney. Work still hasn’t started on that one, either. Before you blame COVID, Qantas announced in 2018 that it expected the renovations to be completed by the end of 2019.
There’s no sign yet either of the Melbourne international Business Lounge refurbishment that Qantas announced in 2023 would commence “from late 2023”. The London First Lounge that was supposed to open this year will be delayed too while Qantas looks for a place to put it.
Meanwhile, the start date for Project Sunrise flights keeps getting pushed back. And given the lack of available A330s, I don’t think we’ll be seeing those Perth-Auckland or Perth-Johannesburg flights that Qantas last year announced would start “from mid-2025”.
In fairness, some of these delays are probably for reasons outside of Qantas’ control.
Those promised Qantas NFTs never happened either, but that’s probably for the better…
Priority baggage
Qantas advertises “priority baggage” as a benefit for Gold, Platinum and Platinum One frequent flyers, as well as Business and First Class passengers.
“When travelling on a Qantas operated flight, your luggage will be some of the first to be delivered to the baggage carousel,” the Qantas website says.
Over many years of flying with Qantas, I’ve rarely noticed any difference. Sure, as a frequent flyer, Qantas puts a tag on my luggage that has the word “priority” on it. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the order that my bag appears on the carousel. (This is perhaps one reason why so many people don’t want to check in their bag.)
This problem isn’t unique to Qantas. It certainly isn’t the only airline out there that struggles with priority baggage!
Honourable mention: Priority boarding
If I would have written this article a year ago, I would have said that Qantas does not do priority boarding well for domestic flights. But things have improved since Qantas introduced boarding groups.
The new system automatically blocks passengers who try to board before staff call their group. However, for the system to fully work, staff also need to turn away passengers from the priority lane if they aren’t entitled to priority boarding – even if their group number has been called. That way, passengers in groups 1 and 2 who arrive at the gate after boarding has started can still get “priority”.
Still, the new system is much better. If Qantas wants to further improve its domestic boarding process, it doesn’t need to look far for ideas. It could just observe how it boards its own international flights… or go for a walk over to the Virgin Australia terminal.
What do you think?
So, those are the things I think Qantas doesn’t do well. You can read about the things Qantas does do well here.
Do you agree with my list of things Qantas could do better? You can leave a comment and share your thoughts on things Qantas does and doesn’t do well on the AFF forum:
