Very interesting observations about QR.
In Europe they get rave reviews, particularly in the UK market & heavily advertise through various media channels, particularly prime time television.
Here in Australia, they only operate from Perth & Melbourne , with not a great deal of marketing or publicity.
In fact I firmly believe they are unheard of as an airline by a large number of Australian based flyers who are casual flyers ( let's say, travel once or twice a year) due to their low foot print in the Australian market at this point in time. EK & EY have good brand awareness in Australia, QR does lack this in a broad sense.
I recently bumped into one of QR's marketing people in Melbourne who was in the midst of buying cartons of shortbread to give to Travel Agents to promote their new route to Edinburgh.
I thought that was a very low key form of publicity to promote a new route to travel agents.... I guess it would win brownie points for any sweet- tooth Travel Agents in Melbourne though!
Putting that aside, I asked about any news on QR operating on the SYD route, for which the answer was " when a suitable slot becomes available".
( hard to read between the lines, but QR have been on the record in saying that the SYD curfew needs to be lifted before contemplating launching a route to SYD)
But I would have to agree, with many of the previous participants in this thread already though, that the level of service in Economy class cabins does not differ greatly by the big names of aviation. ( The exception being some of the North American carriers as who many of us acknowledge are well below par in terms of the quality of their "hard" & " soft" products in Y).
It really is a mixed bag when flying in Y in terms of service these days & can be "hit & miss"..... But I do acknowledge that the role of a FA can be demanding particularly on Red Eye flights such as MEL > DOH on QR.