ivanhoe

My wife and three of her colleagues, all P1, arrived at the gate for this evening's QF94 15 minutes before departure, after arriving on a connecting AA flight (QF code share, no less!!), to find that they had all been bumped to the BNE flight. Seats given away, even though they had valid boarding passes and were at the gate while plenty of people still had to board.

So now will travelling on one of Qantas' ageing 747s instead of A380, plus arriving in Melbourne 6 hours later and missing another morning of children's sporting events.

What is going on, Qantas?

After 18 months of P1, my wife has one bottle of champagne at Christmas as the only thing to show for her loyalty - no upgrades, fine that happens, but couldn't you at least ensure that four of your most valuable clients could board the plane that they had valid boarding passes for, paid for at full Business fares?

For those of you trying to get enough points to qualify for Platinum One, my advice to you is: save your money, vote with your feet and buy cheaper fares on other airlines that offer better value for money and better service for their top-tier customers.

Dave Noble

If expecting anything more than that which is defined to be the benefits associated with status, then likely to be disappointed

It reads that they were likely late arriving for the flight given that boarding had already started. If they were at the gate by the stated minimum time and were denied booking due to oversell, then they will be entitled to compensation.

Picking flights based on schedule/price is something I would recommend to anyone, not just those aiming for P1. I would also look at whether another scheme might give better rewards

number_6

Very sad to hear this, in the past have made many a connection with as litttle as 5 to spare but that was before P1 existed. Personally I've suspected P1 was worthless and have ignored it. QF used to send me bottles of Grange at christmas, but that was a decade ago, at least P1 gets something. QF would have known that AA connection was arriving in time, ,so reallocating the seats is unforgivable but convenient for the staff. Put customers first, Qantas. Time to give your P1 concierge an earful and get 100k points as compensation, or a case of champagne.

og

LAX staff seem oblivious to the stress that late arrivees face.

Two weeks ago we flew MIA (AA) LAX (QF) SYD.. Connection was about 2 hrs and OK by MCT. AA in MIA couldn't (wouldn't) issue our QF BP for LAX-SYD. QF OLCI didn't work. This meant we had to check in at LAX with 2 hrs connection assuming our incoming was on time. This was not good given the 90 min check in limit. Thank goodness for the LAX T4 - TBIT connector. The F lounge staff were not interested in our urgency for getting BPs "we're handling other passengers' problems". We walked to the LAX J lounge and the staff looked after us and were amazed the at the F lounge staff didn't help us.

Short coneections and/or late arrival at the gate = tears. Hey Red Roo, please comment. You're driving us to the competition.

DownUnderFlyer

I am surprised how QF has designed the P1 program. Many things Qantas puts in place resemble what LH is doing in Europe. The two airlines have a good and friendly relationship on a top management level. And while LH with the HON program has almost set the gold standard of how to treat your best customers, QF has gone a completely different route.

SqKiwi

With a delayed inbound, an airline has a high degree of uncertainty when passengers will arrive at the gate especially when it's a busy airport with uncertain taxi times and a change in a terminal is required. They have two choices; do nothing (as most would do) or proactively rebook.
In this case, QF rebooked CIP passengers and got it 'wrong'. Yes, I know it was still boarding, but at T-15 they would have been offloaded and the flight closed. But my experience at LAX would be that 95% of the time what QF did would have been the best outcome.
You can't have it both ways.

number_6

Actually you can -- on some airlines but apparently not QF. Sometimes time management is crucial to me and I pay very high fares and/or high status to get that benefit. LH HON mentioned above did that routinely, so did CX in its glory days (not so much now). I've made dozens of connections 5 min before departure time, and being the last pax to board, and could rely on this when scheduling my time and buying tickets. No longer true for QF (maybe an over-reaction, I remember when QF long-haul flights never left on time and they had to drag pax from the lounge to the plane 15 min after departure time -- very annoying). We keep hearing how 5% of pax make up 90% of airline profit, due to the huge fare differentials, but this won't work for QF if they keep doing what the OP described.

Bottom line, LAX staff acted for their convenience and not for the convenience of the pax. Which is fine if flying JQ discount economy, even ok for QF economy, but not when paying 10x as much for the same flight ... the differentiated service has to exist reliably, for airlines to thrive on this business model that they chose and control. Some other airlines seem to get this balance better than QF at the moment -- something Joyce has to fix urgently, imho, or he'll be eating humble pie next.

Dave Noble

The staff did act in the interests of the passengers. There were a lot of passengers other than the OP on the flight

If the incoming flight was late and passengers arrived late at the gate ( which sounds like they did ) , then c'est la vie ; if flight was oversold, then a zero compensation denial of boarding is better than paying compensation

There is not enough information to know whether the QF members of staff got anything wrong ; if the flight was full, then need to act in time to allow those that may be denied boarding to get a boarding pass and board

ivanhoe

ivanhoe

I understand your thinking, Dave, but the reality in this case is that Qantas simply didn't care.

Inbound connecting flight was wheels down at T-60 and coming into AA terminal, so even with a long taxi (which they did have) it was simpy a matter of walking through the internconnector to TBIT.

Even if the flight was oversold, they had valid boarding passes and were likely to (and actually did) make the gate well before the final passenger boarded.

And as for those waiting for possibility to board - they would have been accommodated on the later BNE flight, which my wife and her colleagues were diverted to.

It takes more than a new Dreamliner ad to be a quality airline... time for Qantas to walk the walk if it wants to retain paying premium customers in its international operations.

Dave Noble

How long before departure did the passengers arrive at the gate?

If the flight was oversold and they did not get to gate in time, then the airline was correct to allow those awaiting seats to get on

That the passengers had boarding passes doesn't matter

Not paying IDB compensation vs paying compensation and having higher IDBs to report to DOT , no compensation seems the obvious choice

ivanhoe

Again, I understand your thinking Dave, but his goes to customer service and how much you value your top customers.

There were 8 full-fare Business Class passengers in my wife's group, four of whom were P1 - all connecting to the same MEL flight.

If it was my business, and those people had collectively spent over $100K with me, I would go the extra mile to ensure they were looked after.

On this occasion, Qantas simply chose not to, which is well within their rights and conditions of carriage, etc - but leaves 8 very disgruntled passengers with rich fodder for BBQ conversations.

Think of how positive those BBQ conversations would have been otherwise...

Dave Noble

If they were late, then no reason to be disgruntled imo

The compensation as shown in https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/250.5 would require payment of 200% of fare as compensation.

8 lots of compensation vs no compensation seems quite logical

Dave

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Dave Noble

How much less could it have reduced it by. It seems that the BNE flight departs about an hour after the Melbourne flight and then I doubt that there is much until the following evening

Looking at the schedules, I woud have thought that they would have been rebooked on the QF611 out of BNE that would have got them in at 10:25 , so 3.5 hours later than QF94

Being a domestic arrival would also give likelihood , if travelling with baggage, to reduce that 3.5 hours given the (ime) fast baggage arrival on a domestic service