Riaan De Jager
Newbie
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2018
- Posts
- 8
Qantas continues to oversell its Business Class as a premium product which, when compared to other carriers, it can no longer claim to be. It is so obvious that they have cut costs in every conceivable way. This is no business class experience! Il-fitting pajamas that make everyone look like inmates of an insane asylum and cosmetic bags containing cheap unbranded products are hardly a differentiator, and as good as it gets. Qantas is about shareholder returns and not about passengers.
QF 63 and QF 64 Sydney – Johannesburg we rate as the worst flight experiences we have had traveling out of Australia.
- How Neil Perry can put his name to the slop they serve defeats logic. He must be paid a good packet to turn a blind eye. Would he sit and eat the food himself? I doubt it. Food served on tiny plates with enormous heavy metal cutlery.
- My daughter had a vegetarian option which can only be described as an inedible health hazard. Her "starter" consisted of some chopped up old carrots and celery, wilted lettuce and a bendy cucumber wrapped in plastic. The veggies were days old, with nothing to dip it in. Her main consisted of cold, sticky noodles with some kind of slimy veggies and chunks of uncooked hard tofu on top. I doubt a single Qantas employee would even be willing to taste it. We were told that she could not eat from the regular menu as there were no meals left and that we should consider ordering Asian vegetarian in future. No meals left!!! So generous.
- My chicken entree looked like the worst microwave meal you could buy in a supermarket. Inedible. My wife's Kingklip fish would bounce at least two meters high if you dropped it on the floor, which was tempting. Both our courses were ice cold. The veggies were cooked days in advance and inedible. The starter shepherd's pie was like cat food, gristly, brown slosh salty.
- When the closely guarded desert trolley made its way around and we had the nerve to ask for the cheese AND the desert the response was rude and we were talked down to like school children. How dare we ask for TWO deserts? Heaven forbid. We were only allowed one desert. The cheese plate had a piece of brie and a slice of chedder with frozen dried apricots and a couple of soggy crackers and some old grapes! My daughters ice cream was frozen rock hard from dry ice and she could not get a spoon in it and gave up. The only in-flight snacks were a -chocolate bar I have never heard of –“Nosh” and small old bruised red apples.--- Breakfast was similarly inedible.
.-The staff to guest ratio is enormous. Food is given to you and a half an hour later they bring the next course. You sit having to look at the wilting and congealing food in front of you. They do not respond to the call button, and drinks are not refreshed.
- The least said about the amenities kit the better. Whilst other airlines use well-known, quality products in their kits, Qantas has clearly found the cheapest possible products and wrapped it in a brand that is supposed to sound sophisticated but smells bad. Go learn from Qatar, Emirates and Catha, Thai who take pride in what they present. Nothing but a cheap little token gesture with Qantas. The bag looked like a toddler’s pencil case our fellow passengers remarked.
- The seats are old and worn through. Both mine and my daughter's seats were broken on the return trip. Hers could only be all the way up or all the way down. My footrest collapsed to the ground when the seat was set to the flat position. The crew could not fix either seat, so they offered us 10000 points each as a compensation. That did not compensate for the discomfort experienced when you have paid for comfort. I could not lie flat. They made a big issue about finding us a second pillow as they only have one pillow per guest!
- Despite pre-booking seats, they were not allocated to us. We sat at the front of the plane near a brightly lit storage cupboard that the crew were back and forth to the whole trip, making sleeping impossible
- The outgoing crew, on the whole, were disinterested and downright rude. None of them looked like they enjoyed their jobs. Quite the contrary. Asking for a cup of tea should not warrant eyes to be rolled. Not once did a single crew member come around to ask if any passenger needed anything. Staff were hostile to each other and did not work cooperatively,
- Return crew was better and tried harder, but we got the impression that they were embarrassed to be associated with such mediocrity and constant issues (and not just us, people around us also had problems).
- The 747 has two tiny toilets for about 35 rows in business. The hand wash was empty when we boarded and remained that way until we landed. Seriously?
At the end of both flights crew vigorously rip bedding from chairs and threw it in the storage cupboard by our chairs, picked up litter, stuffed this into plastic bags which is then shoved into over- head lockers, requiring crew to move guest’s luggage to make room for the garbage bags.
Really, do we need to experience this as business class passengers?
Joyce can say all he likes but Qantas has fallen behind the eight ball and it is slipping. Lower cost airlines like China Southern are catching up and Singapore, Cathay and Qatar are pulling away with first class service and attention to detail now the standard in their business product. We have had amazing business class flights on Garuda, Hawaiian Airlines, Thai Air, Austrian Air, Finnair, Delta, Eastern China airlines, JAL. Sadly there is no alternative to Joburg unless you fly via Asia which is well worth considering to not have to put up with Qantas.
I have to say it: I hate Qantas – Qantas does not care about the client only about profits. Neil Perry I dare you to eat the food on Business class – don’t want to think about the economy class experience
QF 63 and QF 64 Sydney – Johannesburg we rate as the worst flight experiences we have had traveling out of Australia.
- How Neil Perry can put his name to the slop they serve defeats logic. He must be paid a good packet to turn a blind eye. Would he sit and eat the food himself? I doubt it. Food served on tiny plates with enormous heavy metal cutlery.
- My daughter had a vegetarian option which can only be described as an inedible health hazard. Her "starter" consisted of some chopped up old carrots and celery, wilted lettuce and a bendy cucumber wrapped in plastic. The veggies were days old, with nothing to dip it in. Her main consisted of cold, sticky noodles with some kind of slimy veggies and chunks of uncooked hard tofu on top. I doubt a single Qantas employee would even be willing to taste it. We were told that she could not eat from the regular menu as there were no meals left and that we should consider ordering Asian vegetarian in future. No meals left!!! So generous.
- My chicken entree looked like the worst microwave meal you could buy in a supermarket. Inedible. My wife's Kingklip fish would bounce at least two meters high if you dropped it on the floor, which was tempting. Both our courses were ice cold. The veggies were cooked days in advance and inedible. The starter shepherd's pie was like cat food, gristly, brown slosh salty.
- When the closely guarded desert trolley made its way around and we had the nerve to ask for the cheese AND the desert the response was rude and we were talked down to like school children. How dare we ask for TWO deserts? Heaven forbid. We were only allowed one desert. The cheese plate had a piece of brie and a slice of chedder with frozen dried apricots and a couple of soggy crackers and some old grapes! My daughters ice cream was frozen rock hard from dry ice and she could not get a spoon in it and gave up. The only in-flight snacks were a -chocolate bar I have never heard of –“Nosh” and small old bruised red apples.--- Breakfast was similarly inedible.
.-The staff to guest ratio is enormous. Food is given to you and a half an hour later they bring the next course. You sit having to look at the wilting and congealing food in front of you. They do not respond to the call button, and drinks are not refreshed.
- The least said about the amenities kit the better. Whilst other airlines use well-known, quality products in their kits, Qantas has clearly found the cheapest possible products and wrapped it in a brand that is supposed to sound sophisticated but smells bad. Go learn from Qatar, Emirates and Catha, Thai who take pride in what they present. Nothing but a cheap little token gesture with Qantas. The bag looked like a toddler’s pencil case our fellow passengers remarked.
- The seats are old and worn through. Both mine and my daughter's seats were broken on the return trip. Hers could only be all the way up or all the way down. My footrest collapsed to the ground when the seat was set to the flat position. The crew could not fix either seat, so they offered us 10000 points each as a compensation. That did not compensate for the discomfort experienced when you have paid for comfort. I could not lie flat. They made a big issue about finding us a second pillow as they only have one pillow per guest!
- Despite pre-booking seats, they were not allocated to us. We sat at the front of the plane near a brightly lit storage cupboard that the crew were back and forth to the whole trip, making sleeping impossible
- The outgoing crew, on the whole, were disinterested and downright rude. None of them looked like they enjoyed their jobs. Quite the contrary. Asking for a cup of tea should not warrant eyes to be rolled. Not once did a single crew member come around to ask if any passenger needed anything. Staff were hostile to each other and did not work cooperatively,
- Return crew was better and tried harder, but we got the impression that they were embarrassed to be associated with such mediocrity and constant issues (and not just us, people around us also had problems).
- The 747 has two tiny toilets for about 35 rows in business. The hand wash was empty when we boarded and remained that way until we landed. Seriously?
At the end of both flights crew vigorously rip bedding from chairs and threw it in the storage cupboard by our chairs, picked up litter, stuffed this into plastic bags which is then shoved into over- head lockers, requiring crew to move guest’s luggage to make room for the garbage bags.
Really, do we need to experience this as business class passengers?
Joyce can say all he likes but Qantas has fallen behind the eight ball and it is slipping. Lower cost airlines like China Southern are catching up and Singapore, Cathay and Qatar are pulling away with first class service and attention to detail now the standard in their business product. We have had amazing business class flights on Garuda, Hawaiian Airlines, Thai Air, Austrian Air, Finnair, Delta, Eastern China airlines, JAL. Sadly there is no alternative to Joburg unless you fly via Asia which is well worth considering to not have to put up with Qantas.
I have to say it: I hate Qantas – Qantas does not care about the client only about profits. Neil Perry I dare you to eat the food on Business class – don’t want to think about the economy class experience
