Berlin
Established Member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2011
- Posts
- 2,768
- Qantas
- Platinum
Qantas just sent me a generic apology via email following the rather disappointing flight cancellation for my trip to Christchurch last Friday and asked for further feedback. After seeing what as going on over on the NZ South Island, I am actually quite happy to have never made it onto that flight but the overall experience that afternoon was just dismal and I have written it all down to send over to QF so I might as well share with you guys!
While I fully understand that those things can happen in bad weather to keep everyone safe, I think the way Qantas handled this situation was really really poor: I was in the QF lounge well ahead of my flight and got informed of the original delay through a txt message from Qantas. As a side, the message had a link to 'My booking' indicating you could get more info on your flight there, however the booking on the QF sytem still showed the original departure time so I wonder why that link was included in the message to begin with. But back to the main story: Upon asking the lounge desk, they confirmed the delay by 2 hours but still didn't make a single announcement on the matter. Just when it got close to boarding, we then could see the full cancellation on the screens. Once again, lounge staff was not very cluey and told us all to keep waiting until 'the cancellation is confirmed'. This happened about ten minutes later and we were all called to the lounge desk to discuss. After queuing there, the staff simply ticked us off a printed list and sent us down to the gate to organize everything further. I asked if I could cancel the entire trip which was a paid Business class ticket outbound and a Qantas redemption flight in EK First on the return. The lounge lady told me that this 'shouldn't be a problem' but I would be able to make this cancellation down at the gate. I was very doubtful about this imagining how the gate would look like but made my way there regardless.
As expected, the gate was an absolute mess and staff seemed extremely badly organised and unable to handle the situation. There was no separate priority line but at least the staff allowed me to cut the line when I told them I was in business class. However, they were generally very rude and tried to get me away from there as soon as they could. When I mentioned that I live in Sydney, I received a cab voucher to get back home but otherwise was told that I have to contact QF sales for any further info or help with re-booking. Turned out that also no one had told immigration that we'd be arriving at their desks soon without having flown so this created yet another big mess once the first of us arrived at the immigration desks shortly after. We waited in vain at the luggage belt that had been indicated to us by the staff at the gate and another QF employee guiding us back into the arrival area but found out later that the belt number given was incorrect and all our luggage was already standing in a big pile of mess next to another belt.
After finally clearing customs (at that point I had been at the airport for well over 4 hours), I went back up into the departure area in order to speak with someone at the sales desk. The poor lade there was the only staff member in sight and had to handle the nightmare that QF 7 was on the same day: Apparently that A380 had been several hours into the flight and then returned into SYD due to an oil leak and left several people stranded. Again, it seemed that QF handled this issue far less from ideal and among others were two people who were traveling for Business and now wouldn't make their conference anymore so all they wanted was to cancel their flight altogether but Qantas seemed to think they need to argue about the issue and refuse a refund for those people. I can very much understand why they were worked up and the poor sales lady handled the situation as well as she could but the counter was obviously totally understaffed for situations like that. I had to wait around in this area for almost two hours until I finally could get confirmation that I'd get my money and points back if I now cancel the trip entirely (I was meant to spend a delayed birthday weekend in New Zealand and due to fly back on Sunday already so it didn't make sense to fly out for just a day- I later found out that the flight on Saturday got even delayed further into the night so I am really glad about this decision!). Given that it was a QF cancellation, this could have gone much smoother in my eyes. When I had a similar issue with British Airways last year, even they (and BA is certainly not a shining beacon of customer service usually) handled the situation much more gracefully and instantly just offered a refund for the entire trip when the outbound turned out to be cancelled due to a Heathrow computer glitch. All in all, it seemed very poorly handled by the Qantas ground staff and the information flow was everything but ideal.
While waiting at the sales desk, a QF Operations employee showed up and told me that he was extremely 'pissed' about this flight himself as everything was a 'big bold mess' today. Needless to say- the intended birthday trip had turned into exactly such a big bold mess for myself and I was finally home past 10pm that night, completely drained from the experience. I am only posting this as I could imagine some people finding it an interesting read, I usually had much better experiences with Qantas in the past and was quite surprised how badly this was handled. In the end, I had a beautifully sunny Winter weekend in Sydney which was not that bad at all
While I fully understand that those things can happen in bad weather to keep everyone safe, I think the way Qantas handled this situation was really really poor: I was in the QF lounge well ahead of my flight and got informed of the original delay through a txt message from Qantas. As a side, the message had a link to 'My booking' indicating you could get more info on your flight there, however the booking on the QF sytem still showed the original departure time so I wonder why that link was included in the message to begin with. But back to the main story: Upon asking the lounge desk, they confirmed the delay by 2 hours but still didn't make a single announcement on the matter. Just when it got close to boarding, we then could see the full cancellation on the screens. Once again, lounge staff was not very cluey and told us all to keep waiting until 'the cancellation is confirmed'. This happened about ten minutes later and we were all called to the lounge desk to discuss. After queuing there, the staff simply ticked us off a printed list and sent us down to the gate to organize everything further. I asked if I could cancel the entire trip which was a paid Business class ticket outbound and a Qantas redemption flight in EK First on the return. The lounge lady told me that this 'shouldn't be a problem' but I would be able to make this cancellation down at the gate. I was very doubtful about this imagining how the gate would look like but made my way there regardless.
As expected, the gate was an absolute mess and staff seemed extremely badly organised and unable to handle the situation. There was no separate priority line but at least the staff allowed me to cut the line when I told them I was in business class. However, they were generally very rude and tried to get me away from there as soon as they could. When I mentioned that I live in Sydney, I received a cab voucher to get back home but otherwise was told that I have to contact QF sales for any further info or help with re-booking. Turned out that also no one had told immigration that we'd be arriving at their desks soon without having flown so this created yet another big mess once the first of us arrived at the immigration desks shortly after. We waited in vain at the luggage belt that had been indicated to us by the staff at the gate and another QF employee guiding us back into the arrival area but found out later that the belt number given was incorrect and all our luggage was already standing in a big pile of mess next to another belt.
After finally clearing customs (at that point I had been at the airport for well over 4 hours), I went back up into the departure area in order to speak with someone at the sales desk. The poor lade there was the only staff member in sight and had to handle the nightmare that QF 7 was on the same day: Apparently that A380 had been several hours into the flight and then returned into SYD due to an oil leak and left several people stranded. Again, it seemed that QF handled this issue far less from ideal and among others were two people who were traveling for Business and now wouldn't make their conference anymore so all they wanted was to cancel their flight altogether but Qantas seemed to think they need to argue about the issue and refuse a refund for those people. I can very much understand why they were worked up and the poor sales lady handled the situation as well as she could but the counter was obviously totally understaffed for situations like that. I had to wait around in this area for almost two hours until I finally could get confirmation that I'd get my money and points back if I now cancel the trip entirely (I was meant to spend a delayed birthday weekend in New Zealand and due to fly back on Sunday already so it didn't make sense to fly out for just a day- I later found out that the flight on Saturday got even delayed further into the night so I am really glad about this decision!). Given that it was a QF cancellation, this could have gone much smoother in my eyes. When I had a similar issue with British Airways last year, even they (and BA is certainly not a shining beacon of customer service usually) handled the situation much more gracefully and instantly just offered a refund for the entire trip when the outbound turned out to be cancelled due to a Heathrow computer glitch. All in all, it seemed very poorly handled by the Qantas ground staff and the information flow was everything but ideal.
While waiting at the sales desk, a QF Operations employee showed up and told me that he was extremely 'pissed' about this flight himself as everything was a 'big bold mess' today. Needless to say- the intended birthday trip had turned into exactly such a big bold mess for myself and I was finally home past 10pm that night, completely drained from the experience. I am only posting this as I could imagine some people finding it an interesting read, I usually had much better experiences with Qantas in the past and was quite surprised how badly this was handled. In the end, I had a beautifully sunny Winter weekend in Sydney which was not that bad at all
