Article: Qatar Airways’ Bizarre Daily Melbourne-Adelaide Flight

it was due to my fare bucket (I’m on an Award booking via VA made 6 months ago).
That confirms why there's so little award availability on Qatar at the moment. Sounds like pretty much every flight into Australia is oversold in business.

It is appalling that airlines oversell, but it seems to be pretty much unavoidable these days. An EU-style compensation system for flights into/out of Australia would really help here.

I have to say the treatment from Qatar sounds pretty good even if a little incompetent. If this happened on Qantas for example, you would have been told to make your own arrangements, to call Suva for updates & Suva would have told you that your award flight is ineligible for changes and you'll need to pay a new cash fare.
 
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And to state the obvious yet again, this could easily be avoided if our government just allowed Qatar to run a few more flights. Hard to see how this situation is in anyone’s (including ‘national’) interest except Qantas’s.
 
I left Athens at 7pm on Qatar through to ADL all in Business.
...
I asked if there would be any compensation and she said to send an email. (I’m guessing not likely but will try).
You may be entitled to compensation due to departing from an EU port. If you had accepted the downgrade you would have definitely been entitled to "75%" of the fare (generally pro rata based on distance) .

With a re-route that had you arrive more then three hours late, €600 would ordinarily be payable. The only issue here may be that you took the reroute voluntarily rather than accept the downgrade.
 
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And to state the obvious yet again, this could easily be avoided if our government just allowed Qatar to run a few more flights. Hard to see how this situation is in anyone’s (including ‘national’) interest except Qantas’s.
I think to state the actual obvious, this could’ve been easily avoided if QR didn’t oversell the flight. QR knew exactly how many flights it was authorised to fly into Australia when it took the OP’s cash.

Based on QR’s claims on demand, if Australia had granted QR additional rights, it probably would have oversold that flight too and you’d be reading this thread anyway.
 
I think to state the actual obvious, this could’ve been easily avoided if QR didn’t oversell the flight. QR knew exactly how many flights it was authorised to fly into Australia when it took the OP’s cash.

Based on QR’s claims on demand, if Australia had granted QR additional rights, it probably would have oversold that flight too and you’d be reading this thread anyway.
(I’m on an Award booking via VA made 6 months ago) Given the OP did not pay cash am I reading correctly award booking are the first to be bumped ? Looks like Qsuite are a victim of there own success. Glad you got home safely.
 
(I’m on an Award booking via VA made 6 months ago) Given the OP did not pay cash am I reading correctly award booking are the first to be bumped ? Looks like Qsuite are a victim of there own success. Glad you got home safely.

Thanks and I did pay my $750 odd in taxes besides the 130000 odd points. It would seem so as that is what she said- it was due to my fare class Ie. I assumed she was referring to my award ticket.
 
Thanks and I did pay my $750 odd in taxes besides the 130000 odd points. It would seem so as that is what she said- it was due to my fare class Ie. I assumed she was referring to my award ticket.
From what I’ve read on some other forums and heard from others is that it’s not uncommon for QR to bump redemption tickets even with their own frequent flyers. My Aunt and Uncle recently had QR J tickets booked with Avios DOH-MAN and are both BAEC Golds. They didn’t find out until checkin at DOH that they were bumped and were told they could accept Y downgrade or wait 2 days to get the direct DOH-MAN in J even though there is up to 3 flights per day on that route. They didn’t accept and asked it be escalated and were given the option to go same day DOH-LHR in J and then LHR-MAN on BA J. Got home a bit later that night than they had wanted but the bonus of getting QSuites on DOH-LHR as they aren’t on the DOH-MAN route.
 
I think to state the actual obvious, this could’ve been easily avoided if QR didn’t oversell the flight. QR knew exactly how many flights it was authorised to fly into Australia when it took the OP’s cash.

Based on QR’s claims on demand, if Australia had granted QR additional rights, it probably would have oversold that flight too and you’d be reading this thread anyway.
QR are hardly alone in overselling flights, pretty standard practice. Where QR do seem to differ currently is that virtually all their flights are at (or over) capacity.

As for your other point, if QR could really oversell twice as many flights as currently (which I doubt) allowing them that capacity would at least start to address the current under supply of capacity of flights to/from Oz. If true there is clearly a need and I see no reason to deny supply to meet that need.
 
I mentioned this earlier in this thread but QR also tried to bump me from my direct flight in QSuites from ADL-DOH as it was oversold and wanted me to go to MEL for the direct MEL-DOH flight, I politely refused and luckily the lady whom called from Adelaide airport must have called someone else whom relented.

 
I've booked a return flight from DOH to ADL and then onward to BNE (on points(. It's showing as no seats and to approach someone in check-in what are the odds that the flight is oversold?

Maybe when I check in tomorrow on my outbound leg Qtar might have some news? I would be happy if i could just go DOH to BNE directly.
 
It would be nice if airlines started buying A380 to increase capacity.

Thing is of Qatar put the A380 on this route I would avoid it as it doesn't have their QSuites as that is one of the main reasons I travel on their product. I had availability when booking 6 months ago via Sydney on the QR A380 in both business and First but gave it a miss as I enjoy the privacy aspect of their QSuites product. Hey but if they want to put the A380 also on the MEB route as long as they keep their 777 people have a choice and more availabiliy. YMMV.
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I've booked a return flight from DOH to ADL and then onward to BNE (on points(. It's showing as no seats and to approach someone in check-in what are the odds that the flight is oversold?

Maybe when I check in tomorrow on my outbound leg Qtar might have some news? I would be happy if i could just go DOH to BNE directly.

The only advice I can give is to checkin as soon as it opens.
 
QR are hardly alone in overselling flights, pretty standard practice. Where QR do seem to differ currently is that virtually all their flights are at (or over) capacity.

As for your other point, if QR could really oversell twice as many flights as currently (which I doubt) allowing them that capacity would at least start to address the current under supply of capacity of flights to/from Oz. If true there is clearly a need and I see no reason to deny supply to meet that need.
For the record, I do believe that Qatar should be granted the additional traffic rights, but I don't think it's fair to say that this happened specifically because Qatar were denied additional traffic rights. It's their commercial decision to oversell these flights, and they must know that if almost every single one of their flights are oversold, customers are unlikely to be able to be booked onto a flight within a reasonable delay if bumped and instead will have to wait much longer (vs. just a few oversold flights here or there).

Additionally, customers only finding out that they've been bumped after arriving in Doha is also suboptimal, as had for instance the customer found out they've been bumped in Europe, there would be lots more routing possibilities to get them back to Australia with minimal delay on other carriers, whereas flying out of Doha you're basically limited to QR. I understand they probably don't fully know the loads until the very last minute, but obviously this doesn't lead to a good customer experience (they must've known 12 hours before that there's a high chance that someone would need to be bumped, but it was a commercial decision to wait until the last minute).

Also, I would note that @Spizz was flying to Adelaide and was told that the next Adelaide flight was oversold as well (in addition to their ADL-DOH flight outbound being oversold too), and yet Qatar has unlimited traffic rights into Adelaide.

Would the situation be better if Qatar had more traffic rights into SYD/BNE/MEL/PER? Yeah, probably and indeed they should be granted them. But this situation is Qatar's own doing (especially one customer coming across 3 oversold QR flights on one trip, all to/from ADL where they have unlimited traffic rights).

Does anyone know if there's been weather/technical/other issues causing cancelled flights on QR between Australia and Doha (which would be at least somewhat understandable since the displaced pax would result in overbookings), or is it just QR deciding to allow overbookings to this degree from the get go?
 
Overselling I think is a contemptible business practice but if it needs to be done it needs better managed and have better outcomes than we’ve heard here.

I was on a QR Award Flight in J ADL-MEL-DOH a few weeks ago. Only about 20 or so passengers boarded in Adelaide, which indicates to me that there isn’t enough traffic direct from Adelaide to run an additional direct flight. Only one data point of course 😊.

Oh, I was going to say that perhaps I was lucky not to be bumped, but given that the plane was virtually empty when I boarded, putting me back in whY would’ve been a very strange thing to do. There were two unoccupied seats in the business cabin, Melbourne to Doha.
 
Im going to make a few assumptions. The direct ADL-DOH mostly fills up in QSuites leading to those if oversold making onto the ADL-MEL-DOH flight which is oversold by people travelling onwards from MEL-DOH and so in reverse. Additional capacity for MEL may fix or at least alleviate this issue.
 
I was on a QR Award Flight in J ADL-MEL-DOH a few weeks ago. Only about 20 or so passengers boarded in Adelaide, which indicates to me that there isn’t enough traffic direct from Adelaide to run an additional direct flight. Only one data point of course 😊.
Perhaps it's only the direct flights that are being oversold? My best guess would be the return version of that flight would not be very popular with people going to ADL due to the 12:30am -> 5:30am transit (during which which IIRC you cannot leave airside MEL?)
 
You may be entitled to compensation due to departing from an EU port. If you had accepted the downgrade you would have definitely been entitled to "75%" of the fare (generally pro rata based on distance) .

With a re-route that had you arrive more then three hours late, €600 would ordinarily be payable. The only issue here may be that you took the reroute voluntarily rather than accept the downgrade.

Some potentially good news coming, if I can actually receive the OTP from the Qatar website via email to fill in the paperwork. Will keep you updated.
 
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Good to see a new plane with more capacity being put on the direct ADL-DOH service. Will hopefully alleviate some of the overselling on this route. Also SQ is adding a larger aircraft for the ADL-SIN service to-

 

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