Of course, it really shouldn't have been up to her, anyway - if Operations had done what it had promised, and had the cabs waiting at BNE. Two things occur to me:
a) I wonder if QF Ops did in fact call one of the BNE cab companies, ordered 100 cabs to the airport for 2am, and the cab call centre person said "yeah, sure" and hung up, thinking it was a practical joke?
b) given that the pax weren't going to get their bags that night anyway, it would have made much more sense for the QF bus to have dropped the pax in the BNE CBD, where there would have been cabs (and where many of the out-of-town pax would probably have been heading anyway).
I had thought about that. Like I mentioned, getting 100 cabs at a time at that point of the day would be a challenge. Not insurmountable though, and if they were to be charged back to a master Qantas account (because it would be improper to leave the pax holding the bag on the bill, even with promise of reimbursement), wouldn't the cab company (read: the dispatcher) put two and two together?
If not, the dispatcher needs to be added to the body bag count. (Yes, I do realise there are idiots in BNE who will call the cab company and pull pranks like order cabs to non-existent places, or try and order a pizza and shout abuse down the line. Unfortunately, natural selection is not quite up to speed on this yet...)
For 100 cabs, I don't think there would be that many on the road at that time, let alone they have to actually accept the job given to them (drivers may see the job but they don't have to accept it). So it would be somewhat a slow feed of drivers going back and forth (though if there were 100 cabs at that time, given the day and time, they would be morbidly stupid to turn down such a job). In other words, there would need to be some QF coordination, not to mention some cabs will certainly go home but others need to be to organised accommodation.
Dropping pax in the BNE CBD and leaving them to their devices will not solve the problem. Admittedly, I'm surprised and not surprised that there isn't the Operations Manager for BNE on hand to deal with this crisis (unlike had it happened in SYD), i.e. wake him/her up, get him dressed and set up a point of contact to deal with these cases. The shuttle driver would just be following orders so hard to pin him/her down for negligence or lack of duty of care.
What was required was a considered and organised response from QF as soon as the crisis was made known to QF, as well as assurance for all pax of a single point and method of resolution. All of that, plus the necessary ounce of empathy, was clearly lacking.
What the OP's case has also demonstrated is that both BNE and OOL Airports are completely ill equipped to deal with such a crisis; it's almost embarrassing in the greater context when you think BNE and OOL are trying to prove they deserve something on the world stage and then they decide to show how incompetent they are in supporting the airlines let alone the greater operation of the airport and it's purpose. It's lucky that in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor incident. Had it been a more serious incident, then not even God can save us as to how are we supposed to cope........
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