guy said:
come on guys, the airlines are in the business of moving people, just beacuse of the alliances doesnt mean they wont help displace passenger.s
I was on a LAN D class ticket syd/akl/syd, and never flew LAN, delay over to akl meant QF stepped in and back F in Air NZ and they even gave me the QG points and status.
While many times the airlines will assist displaced passengers, especially those travelling in business or first class, when travelling on a restricted ticket there is no guarantee they will move the passenger onto an airline that for which that ticket is not valid.
In your example, LAN will have endorsed the ticket to QF and NZ (I was not aware NZ had F class trans-Tasman) and hence those airlines collect the fare revenue via the IATA clearing house.
On a LONE4 fare, the ticket is only valid for carriage on OneWorld airlines. There would be no problem at all with the displaced passenger being moved to any OneWorld carrier to get them to their destination. That carrier would obtain the revenue via the usual fare distribution through the clearing house. However, a non-OneWorld airline is not going to accept the LONE4 ticket coupon since they have no way of getting the revenue since the coupon is clearly marked as only valid for carriage on OneWorld airlines. So the OneWorld airline responsible this sector carriage has a choice to either delay the passenger until the next available OneWorld flight (may be several days in the example given) or to agree to pay the carrying airline and effectively purchasing a ticket for the passenger.
Given the small amount of revenue that QF would be earning on a LONE4 ticket for SIN-DPS flight (its considered an intra-continental flight, and the lion's share of the fare revenue goes to the inter-continental services), they may be reluctant to lose money by paying another airline to carry their passenger.
As an example, a LLONE4 fare costs around A$3000. In a typical ATW itinerary, the SIN-DPS flight of 1037 miles may be around 2.5% of the flown mileage and if the fare is apportioned to the carrying airlines by mileage, that would mean a revenue of around $75 for that sector. Not a great incentive for the ticketed airline to go out of their way to assist unless the passenger was a high status FF member. Note the cheapest published SQ fare on that route is A$216 (YOWA) though it can be expected QF may be required to be less than published fares and will depend on availability.
So with the OP being on a LONE4 fare, the segment in question being a very low revenue proportion of the fare, the ticket specifically excluding the ability to endorse to non-OneWorld carriers, and the route only being operated 3 times a week by any OneWorld airline, I would not be surprised if a misconnect means some unscheduled sightseeing in SIN.
I am not saying QF would not pay to move the passenger over to SQ or GA for this sector. I am say that such assistance is not a right nor guaranteed and that this specific example includes few options due to the lack of OneWorld options available.
The situation is quite a bit different from a D fare SYD-AKL-SYD where the airline can endorse the ticket and hence fare revenue to another airline with little or no cost implication to themselves.