Originally Posted by
Dave Noble
There is the consideration on how much more delayed the passengers would have been if not rebooked onto an earlier service
The poster indicated a 3 hour delay in Sydney due to weather
I would be surprised if the airline put passenger on an earlier flight without agreement .
This wasn't just a downgrade on a normally operating flight , but delayed flights due to weather, rebooking to try and get the passenger home and an oversold cabin
It seems odd that the airline would rebook and downgrade without any involvement of the passenger
The passengers could have refused to board in economy class and waited for the original flight I suspect
Dave, most of your response is speculation. To note that you make the very telling reference to "oversold cabin"....
In any case, the airline's problems shouldn't be used as an excuse to fail to provide the service paid for by a customer.
Please consider that weather events (if that is the excuse this time) should be part of the operational risk matrix with appropriate mitigations ready to deploy: the airline may be not able to predict when, but certain knows such events will occur at a certain probability and with a certain severity.
That's basic management 101 for any operation.
And if all else fails, the airline should be prepared to offer reasonable compensation rather than using its shonky tricks to palm off the customer.
Meanwhile, I'm told by a 717 pilot that QF is "skimping" on maintenance (a "just in need" approach) and swapping out aircraft with business class for those without (e.g. some 717 routes), so assuming that is indeed true the airline is hardly putting the customer first since such practices result in flights being avoidably delayed cancelled as engineers tend to issues....and in some cases business class customers being faced with QF removing that service from their flight.