Gun_blade

Hi all,

My itinerary was recently changed and the connection flight will be departing 5 mins before I landed in Sydney. I called Qantas to see if there is problem on their end and their response was that it was normal and they pretty much said that if I don't like the negative transit time I have the option to change the flight to one that departed after my arrival for hundreds of dollars. I told them there is no way one can make a connection that departed before one's arrival and I should be entitled to change to a later connection free of charge. But they disagree and ask me to take it up to my booking agent.

Do anyone here have any experience trying to make the connection that departed before one's schedule arrival? What options do I have now?

Mwenenzi

Gun_blade Welcome to FT

Is your incoming flight on the same PNR/ticket as the QF flight? Or a separate itinerary?
What are the flights?

If booked via a travel agent you need to deal with the TA and not QF

Gun_blade

They are on the same ticket and when I booked the connecting flight was on 10AM.

Now, it is the the following:

QF74 San Francisco to Sydney
Departs23:25 (Sat) Arrives09:00 (Mon) Duration:14h 35min

QF143 Sydney to Auckland
Departs08:55 (Mon) Arrives14:10 (Mon) Duration:3h 15min

Mwenenzi

QF should change at no cost to you.
Is this a cash paid ticket or an award?
There are limited SYD-AKL fights on QF metal. QF code share with EK

Phone QF or your TA again.

serfty

It will be fixed - but you need to refer to your agent, not Qantas.

Being on the one PNR, this should be free of further payment from you - Qantas certainly won't charge anything, nor should your agent (some unscrupulous agents may try to assess a fee).

Qantas Industry Sales Site - Policies and Procedures - Qantas Schedule Information

QFSKEDCHG

Gun_blade

I had just flew Qantas from Syd to Mel last week and I had a very pleasant flight. It was the first time I flew with Qantas and the crews were really professional. The whole experience rivaled any other airlines I had taken before.

However, this incident leaves me a bad taste. I usually fly SQ exclusively and recently UA to southeast Asia. Admittedly, I am not a very frequent flyer but I flew enough to earn Krisflyer Silver. From my experience with SQ, I am very confident that if the same scenario happened with SQ, they will proactively contact me to work out a solution for a later connecting flight with no action needed from my side. For UA, I will expect them to at least acknowledge that there is an issue and take action to correct the connecting flight problem when I get in touch with them. As for Qantas, they unilaterally changed the itinerary to one that is impossible to make and ask for extra payment to remedy it. Somehow, that sounds like a extortion to me.

Globaliser

No, that's simply not going to happen. Like others, I suspect that you simply need to get in touch with your TA to make the change.

Before you do that, use available tools to work out what your options now are, and what works best for you. You may then know exactly what to ask for, instead of being pushed into accepting something through being surprised or not having enough time to think about it. The chances are that the solution is just to go on a later SYD-AKL flight.

Mwenenzi

Your QF itinerary would, at some time, been flagged as not possible and QF would have contacted your TA to resolve (at no cost to you).

To me your itinerary has not been unilaterally changed, but rather that the flight schedules has been changed. That happens with all airlines.

When is the flight? The times look like after Aust daylight saving time happens. Also AA now fly LAX-AKL

Dave Noble

I would call back ; assuming that this is a through booking, Qantas will rebook you onto flights where the journey can be made for no charge

og

Had a similar situation with a misconnecting schedule change. When speaking with the QF phone agent in an attempt to sort it out, she said it takes them days to weeks to sort out these issues with every passenger - depending on how soon the first flight is. This was for a ticket issued by QF (not through a TA).

Unless things have recently changed, QF normally contacts the TA and it is then it's the TA's role to contact the passenger to sort a new flight connection. QF won't (shouldn't) "touch" a ticket issued by an agent before the flight (until it comes under airport control at T-24 hrs).

Gun_blade

Thank you all for all the helpful and encouraging advice. I have since contacted the TA and they are working with Qantas to sort it out.

I still think that Qantas should proactively be flagging all connection below a preset minimum connection time, and notifies TA and passengers about the schedule changes.

Mwenenzi

I am sure that would have happened. When is your flight?

On the current timetable for SYD-AKL
QF143 09:55
QF145 12:30
QF147 16:15
QF149 18:45
When daylight saving starts time may be different

Dave Noble

The Qantas system would have picked up the connection problem and would have addressed it prior to travel and informed the travel agent or passenger

The system can only be reactive - it can only respond once the misconnection has happened

Gun_blade

It will be on the week of Thanksgiving and looks like I will be flying the QF145.

Mwenenzi

OK. I needed to google thanksgiving:- "Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States"
So about 24th November. The schedules could change again by that date