QF check-in agent told me a whopper last night...

[mannej]

It doesn't need to be a catastrophic event that opens an overhead locker mid-flight.

There are times where pax do not close the lid properly, or the latch does not click on properly. A bit of turbulence, and bang out comes someone's hand luggage. Rare yes, but I have seen it happen.

I don't think there is any pattern that I can see from airline to airline

 

[Flying Fox]

It doesn't need to be a catastrophic event that opens an overhead locker mid-flight.

There are times where pax do not close the lid properly, or the latch does not click on properly. A bit of turbulence, and bang out comes someone's hand luggage. Rare yes, but I have seen it happen.

I don't think there is any pattern that I can see from airline to airline

Not that I agree with the QF agent's comments but I have seen it myself and just missed out on getting knocked on the head.

Flying NZ and sitting in an A seat with a nice Japanese business man sitting next to me in B. Mid flight some dim-wit (I'm being polite) who looked like an experience business man got his laptop out of the overhead and left the locker open above us.

A few mins later a full bottle of duty free Cointreau (probably a 1.25L) came loose and hit Mr Japanese business man next to me on his head.

Mr Dim-wit didn't even appologise and the cabin crew came and supplied cold packs etc. Mr Japan didn't even yell or anything when the bottle hit him. I was shocked. The locker was closed quickly. Both Mr Japan & cabin crew were very good.

Later on Mr Dim-wit did it again. Left the locker open. I wanted to smack him in the head but someone got up and closed it for him.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So this morning I called QF, explained what happened, expressed my incredulity and asked for clarification. After some minutes of checking I was told, unsurprisingly, that there is no such policy.

Yup. And when the first rumours came out about QF charging for exit row seats i spoke to the premium desk to express my concern and they came back after a few minutes and said 'there is no such policy that anyone knows about'.

Two weeks later the charging for exit rows was on the QF website.

(Not that I imagine for a minute this new 'policy' to be true... the purpose of my post was just to point out that QF agents aren't necessarily a reliable source of confirming upcoming policy!)

 

[Mal]

QF agents aren't necessarily a reliable source of confirming upcoming policy!)

And in some cases - not a reliable source of current policy either

 

[ozbeachbabe]

Yup. And when the first rumours came out about QF charging for exit row seats i spoke to the premium desk to express my concern and they came back after a few minutes and said 'there is no such policy that anyone knows about'.

Two weeks later the charging for exit rows was on the QF website.

(Not that I imagine for a minute this new 'policy' to be true... the purpose of my post was just to point out that QF agents aren't necessarily a reliable source of confirming upcoming policy!)

In fairness to QF Staff, a lot of the time management come up with these hairbrained ideas that become policy then all of a sudden it's in a press release to the media before everyone in the company knows about it.

If people at the coalface say they don't know about such a policy existing they probably haven't been told about it.

 

[nlagalle]

This is a strange one. When I checked in for a flight at BNE yesterday afternoon the QF check-in agent in the Business line, whose name I will withhold out of fairness, wanted to weigh my roll-a-board. It came to 8kg. I asked him if that was going to be a problem and he said no, but that there was a new QF policy that he wanted me to be aware of.

According to the check-in agent, on Monday of this week QF introduced a new policy that every time a QF FF member had carry on luggage over the 7kg limit, the incident was to be recorded in the member's profile and, when the member had accumulated three "strikes", he/she would lose their platinum status! He told me that there was a two-week grace period where nothing was to be recorded and he wanted me to be "aware of this policy". To round out his story, the check-in agent was at pains to point out that "You won't lose your points, just your status". He delivered all of this information in a very serious, detailed manner.

What a joke! so what happens when you don't check in and go straight the QP for the gate?