When things go wrong ....

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pacblue

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I flew MEL-SYD QF-416 on Friday (Dec 8th) in J class and the service was lacking to say the least.

Headsets weren't handed out until halfway through the in-flight news (no headsets at gate lounge), the food (bacon, eggs etc) was cold, as was the coffee (and no refil offered). The F/A's were tripping over each other - and confusion seemed to reign about who was doing what.

The service was just plain clumsy and slow.

I know it's only a 90 minute flight - and the comments may seem frivolous - but my employer shells out about $1200 bucks for the round trip.

I must say, I have never really had bad service in J with QF. Maybe they were having a bad day - or are Qantas' standards slipping ?. Anyone else had similar experiences recently ?

I'm flying back to MEL tonight (QF-459) in J. Hope the return flight is a lot better.
 
Not recently but earlier this year I had an anomalously bad QF flight between SYD and MEL. Like you I was in paid business class.

No catering (this was early evening flight that was delayed to mid evening departure) - on arrival we were offered vouchers for snack in the airport terminal but we had to visit a city flyer desk to collect the vouchers. By this time most food places were starting to close up already. Thanks but no thanks - late enough already and last thing I want to do is hang around the terminal, queue up and then wolf down a bad snack before they close up. Seat broken - no recline and no ife. Lights broken so I couldn't read a book.

I complained and got a bottle of ordinary wine that cost QF more to send to me (trans-tasman) than the wine was worth.

The whole episode left a sour taste in the mouth, although I've flown QF enough to know that I was very unlucky to have so many things go wrong on the one flight.
 
I also just sent an email to QF about J class service - a summary of the last six months includes broken IFE, running out of food and drink choices, and the lack of timely response from staff to requests and even the call button. (I shouldn't have to press it twice over a 10 minute period to get attention!)

Chrisb.

PS.. I had Qantas J class 'toast' on a breakfast flight yesterday - Why do they bother - it's like warmed up re-enforced cardboard. :)
 
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What a difference a day makes !

Flew back to MEL in J class on QF 459, Airbus, seat 1-E (my favorite), service was great, crew great, smiles, nothing a problem, everything ran smoothly.

Maybe the small, old 737's do something to the crew !?.

Whatever it is - the Qantas "product" has to be consistent.

You should get what you pay for.
 
As a frequent J class traveller I can relate to most of these comments, particularly in more recent times. However I can't quite understand the issue with the headsets:

pacblue said:
Headsets weren't handed out until halfway through the in-flight news (no headsets at gate lounge)

I never collect headsets as I board because they are always in the seat pocket in front of me. Pacblue are you saying that they hadn't reset the equipment after the previous flight?
 
I think this is perhaps where DJ have the edge over QF (and JQ). When you get onboard a DJ flight you know exactly what kind of service you'll receive. You know you'll be on a 737, all the seats are the same, the food service is consistant and the staff are consistantly good.

The Qantas group seem to struggle a little with consistancy, be it the varying quality of inflight meals or the often poor attitudes of some staff (yet to experience this on a Virgin or Pacific Blue flight). I think QF need to realise that their customers are demanding a more consistant product, not one that varies between bad and good.
 
I think consistency is the key here. My experience of 14 hours on a 743 vs. 14 hours on a 744 for the same price of tickets is clear evidence that you dont always get what you pay for ;)

Also the staff seem to vary wildly in terms of service - from excessively friendly to invisible.

Its hard for me to benchmark as I just havent flown enough to truly compare but I promise to be back in twelve months for a formal benchmarking exercise ;)
 
I've experienced both very poor service and fantastically good service on QF. It is very patchy indeed, and must hurt them at times in terms of repeat business. It's one of the reasons I fly DJ most of the time - consistently good service from the crews.

I've often wondered (in the case of QF) if it is all down to the cabin supervisor's attitude and influence on the rest of the crew on each flight.
 
Homer said:
I never collect headsets as I board because they are always in the seat pocket in front of me. Pacblue are you saying that they hadn't reset the equipment after the previous flight?

Nope. No headsets in seat pockets, I actually had to ask, by the time I got some (by the time anyone got some, the news was half over)

Pacblue.
 
Well the ground staff/cleaning crew should be restocking the J seats with headphones between flights; this does not always happen. If this had been me, I would have requested one prior to take off.
 
Well, I recommend you all tell Qantas of your experiences - I emailed them last week and got a phone call today letting me know that an 'executive' was looking into my comments and would get back to me.

In my case I included detailed dates/flights for them to follow up. In one case the FA said they would be lodging a report so it'll be interesting to see if that actually happened.

Chrisb.
 
I must have been lucky with my recent flights where I've been in J (between BNE/SYD/MEL), as I had excellent service on my 3 sectors in the past month.

It is disapponting to hear about the inconsistencies, regardless of whether it's aircraft type, crew, ground staff, etc. I would have been unhappy had I been paying J fares and receiving the lack of service others have been posting. There is certainly an expectation of service at the pointy end of the plane. Thankfully I've been accessing ODU's....

Perhaps the proposed private equity buyout (if it proceeds) might shake some of the dead branches out of the tree :-| ...
 
Re the buy-out we just dont know what the objectives will be. MacBank might want to make this a premium airline - that is a way to make money when you have protected routes. The big losers are potentially going to be staff (from lost benefits) - with no idea of the impact on pax...
 
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