Originally Posted by
skimthetrees
I was hit on the other side of this. We have a family traveling QF4 AKL-SYD scheduled for Feb 25. QF delayed the flight 24 hours to Feb. 26. Perhaps they delayed rather than cancelled it to avoid paying for hotel? They sent us an email saying they are not responsible and will not pay.
We are traveling with 2 in J and 2 in PE. All other flights today are zeroed out in J and, of course, no other flights have PE. Also the only QF flight with Y seats is the last flight of the evening so we would not only have to downgrade, we would miss a whole day in SYD anyway. We're just waiting it out 24 hours but it was a serious pain. We had to change hotels in NZ and SYD (arriving a day later) which repriced at last minute full flex rates. Pretty bad.
It can state what it likes, but given that there are other options it can use to get you across from NZ, I cannot see that it can fall outside the protections of the Montreal convention - it might have to downgrade a passenger to do so, but I cannot see that it can just claim "not my fault guv'nor - not paying" ; I could see that for those stuck in USA due to weather with no other options available, it would be covered , but doesn;t seem at all reasonable for trans tasman
I would say that the main reason it is not cancelled is that it is not a daily service and so there is not another QF4 that its flight number would conflict with. If it was a daily service , then I would suspect it would be cancelled and a special flight number attached