QF flight changes - good news and bad

[ayebee]

Received a "Your flight has changed" email a couple of days ago which was interesting.
We had a 0920 flight QF610 MEL-BNE, to allow a connection to a 1425 QF flight to Manila.
The change was that QF610 would now depart MEL at 1550, arriving BNE 1810. A bit late to get the Manila flight ...
On the return, we would be on QF615 BNE-MEL now departing at 1900 instead of 0910, which created a 12 hour wait at BNE.

I found it interesting QF kept us on the same flight numbers which had significant timing changes, rather than keep the times with changed flight numbers, even when there were obvious international connections.

In "Manage Booking" the only options seemed to be "Accept" or "cancel", with the latter indicating a call to support was needed, so it had to be a call.
40 minutes later an agent made the changes to the new flight numbers with the same timing as the original flights.

The good news is that the new flights are Qantaslink on the new A220s. Much nicer for couples than the 737s with middle seat.
That suggests the new aircraft are progressively taking over.

The bad news is that the changes cannot be accessed for "manage booking" (eg for seat selection).
The bookings show OK in the top view, but when clicking through only the MNL-BNE and BNE-MEL segments show, but entering seat selection on the latter it just hangs and never completes. The MEL-BNE and BNE-MNL flights do not appear at all.
Looks like another call is required ...

 

[clifford]

The bad news is that the changes cannot be accessed for "manage booking" (eg for seat selection).
The bookings show OK in the top view, but when clicking through only the MNL-BNE and BNE-MEL segments show, but entering seat selection on the latter it just hangs and never completes. The MEL-BNE and BNE-MNL flights do not appear at all.
Looks like another call is required ...

This seems to be a bug they have recently introduced.

On a couple of my bookings where there have been such involuntary changes, seat selection has become unavailable. A bit of a pain when you're trying to get the best seat available just before the flight.

I have spoken to agents in Hobart, who say they know nothing about this issue. Just have to live with it!

That's Qantas for you. They're not prepared to pay for decent IT.

 

[Franky]

This seems to be a bug they have recently introduced.

On a couple of my bookings where there have been such involuntary changes, seat selection has become unavailable. A bit of a pain when you're trying to get the best seat available just before the flight.

I have spoken to agents in Hobart, who say they know nothing about this issue. Just have to live with it!

That's Qantas for you. They're not prepared to pay for decent IT.

It's long been said that they use work experience kids to do their IT upgrades!!

 

[AIRwin]

That suggests the new aircraft are progressively taking over.

Australia Red Tail Sale is on now and your post reminded me to book my MEL-BNE flight in the new year which I also noticed are mostly scheduled to be operated by A220 with QF12XX flight numbers instead of QF6XX

 

[ayebee]

Further to this, and I am wondering if others are experiencing similar issues with "Manage Booking" functions after flight changes ?

I received the updated e-ticket, and online & in the app I can see the flights OK.
However, the seat selection function no longer works.
I figured I needed to re-select seats for the changed flights MEL-BNE and BNE-MEL.
In Manage Booking, I go to select / change seats and it only shows MNL-BNE and BNE-MEL in teh drop down, but still shows there are 4 flights to work through.
On the BNE - MEL flight I can see, the seat map is shown and it lets me select seats, but then clicking confirm or "next flight" it just hangs.
Same behaviour on both PC and app.

OK, I need to call Qantas .... the support reference number method worked well and I got straight through to an agent (Sth Africa). Once I explained etc, she tried to allocate seats and was not able to either. She was getting some error code that indicated (I think) that seats were already assigned. Maybe that was from the previous flight number or my attempt that was still "hanging".

So the only thing she could do was put through an IT support request for the problem.

Have other AFFers had similar issues ?

 

[ayebee]

Wondering if going via social media may have a benefit, I put a post in Qantas FB page.
The post was still in "review" but I received whatsapp calls from a UK number ostensibly providing customer support service.
"Andrew" wanted to help me solve the seat selection issue, but first he wanted me to load a specific app on my phone so I could receive compensation.

Once I advised I did not want compensation, but just for the manage booking function to work properly he terminated the call. This seemed like dodgy behaviour.

Anyone know if this is for real ?