ramboflyer
Member
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2004
- Posts
- 386
There are some downsides to using your Qantas FF points to travel to some destinations where you don't have a choice but to use Jetstar. I recently travelled with Jetstar from Melbourne to Darwin return. Having a liking for the extra leg room esp. on a 4 hour + flight I decided to book and pay for the extra leg room seats for my wife and I.
It turned out to be a total balls up.
I had rang Jetstar and given them my Qantas booking reference and they had given me row 10 both ways. On looking at the Jetstar website I confirmed the extra leg room seats were row 10 from the graphic in the seat allocation page.
On boarding in Melbourne we found that in fact row 10 was not an exit row. Row 10 on my flight was a normal row. Row 11 is only 2 seats either side of the aisle with the extra leg room. With the assistance of a helpful cabin crew member passengers were moved around and we sat in row 11. The only problem there was the extra leg room was offset by the extra narrow seats!
As the A321 is an airbus there are 2 exit rows - the other being row 24 on the Jetstar website which in fact was row 25.
Not wanting the same to happen in 3 weeks when I returned to Melbourne I made several phone calls to Jetstar. To my amazement customer service people had no knowledge or understanding of the problem and refused to change our seats. I decided to go to the Darwin airport where I was informed that in fact there are 2 versions of the A321. One has a row 5 and one doesn't. Row 11 and 25 are exit rows where there is a row 5 and row 10 and 24 where there is no row 5. I had row 10 booked for the return flight and the helpful person told me we were on the other version going back and row 10 was 3 seats across. I left a happy man.
That all changed when we checked in and I tried to confirm all was Ok. It was the same type of A321 we had flown up on. The woman at the airport was very understanding and made 2 trips to her supervisor and although we ended up in ordinary seats I was promised a refund of the extra I had paid.
The point to this is that if a booking is made on a Jetstar A321 flight either by phone or the internet and you want to pay $30 a seat for the extra leg room you have a 50/50 chance of getting what you pay for. Another point is that Jetstar phone staff have no knowledge of this problem.
Footnote: The cabin crew member on the Melbourne/Darwin flight said the problem happens all the time!
It turned out to be a total balls up.
I had rang Jetstar and given them my Qantas booking reference and they had given me row 10 both ways. On looking at the Jetstar website I confirmed the extra leg room seats were row 10 from the graphic in the seat allocation page.
On boarding in Melbourne we found that in fact row 10 was not an exit row. Row 10 on my flight was a normal row. Row 11 is only 2 seats either side of the aisle with the extra leg room. With the assistance of a helpful cabin crew member passengers were moved around and we sat in row 11. The only problem there was the extra leg room was offset by the extra narrow seats!
As the A321 is an airbus there are 2 exit rows - the other being row 24 on the Jetstar website which in fact was row 25.
Not wanting the same to happen in 3 weeks when I returned to Melbourne I made several phone calls to Jetstar. To my amazement customer service people had no knowledge or understanding of the problem and refused to change our seats. I decided to go to the Darwin airport where I was informed that in fact there are 2 versions of the A321. One has a row 5 and one doesn't. Row 11 and 25 are exit rows where there is a row 5 and row 10 and 24 where there is no row 5. I had row 10 booked for the return flight and the helpful person told me we were on the other version going back and row 10 was 3 seats across. I left a happy man.
That all changed when we checked in and I tried to confirm all was Ok. It was the same type of A321 we had flown up on. The woman at the airport was very understanding and made 2 trips to her supervisor and although we ended up in ordinary seats I was promised a refund of the extra I had paid.
The point to this is that if a booking is made on a Jetstar A321 flight either by phone or the internet and you want to pay $30 a seat for the extra leg room you have a 50/50 chance of getting what you pay for. Another point is that Jetstar phone staff have no knowledge of this problem.
Footnote: The cabin crew member on the Melbourne/Darwin flight said the problem happens all the time!