Long time lurker on the Qantas forum - thanks for all the advice over the past couple of years

I'm trying to start a 130,000 point RTW with 5 stops to exotic places including Peru, Buenos Aires and Rio, here in sunny Melbourne. Trying in that QF93 (Saturday's departure) is still sitting at the gate.

Yesterday was NOT a good day. I'm based in Canberra, and when going to the US usually go via Sydney but because this is an award ticket I had to go CBR-MEL-LAX-LIM as that was the only routing with award seats (back in February!)

Anyhow, the original flight QF2801 was cancelled because of the weather issues the previous night in Canberra. We were rebooked on QF763 which was going to be tight at Melbourne; it would have been good if they’d called us to say “no rush getting to the airport, you can sleep in” rather than having to get up at 6am.

We got to Melbourne with no problems, straight through immigration and into the holding pen at Gate 8. Seeing things were running ‘slow’ and they were just about to board people in wheelchairs, I decided to hit the QP to get some red wine into me as it definitely makes me drowsy.

The scheduled departure time was 12.20pm, and we boarded around 12.30pm. Then we sat and waited while the captain kept giving our messages over the PA:

‘We have to wait for a party from Perth to arrive…’
‘We have to wait 5 minutes so the engineers can work out whats wrong’
‘Qantas always says safety over schedule’
‘We have to wait another 15 minutes so the engineers can do some tests’
‘We have to wait another 10-15 minutes as the tests are in progress’
‘As soon as we know anything we’ll let you know’
‘The engineers are working in the hold of the aircraft’
‘The computers are disagreeing about the volume of fuel in the tanks’ – this was the root cause of the problem as the valve controllers on the fuel tanks wouldn’t agree on how much fuel is in the tanks.

We actually waited three hours on the tarmac while the plane’s airconditioning system failed to work to compound the misery. I had overheard the flight attendant saying it was 35 degrees at the back of the plane. They decided to open the doors to let the cabin cool down which made a difference. The cabin crew were pretty good doing water runs etc.

We were then informed that a part was being sent down from Sydney – and of course that flight had mechanical problems too! You’d think that Melbourne (population 3.5million) wouldn’t be so remote an outpost of the shrinking Qantas empire to not have spare parts.

The captain then tried the Control+Alt+Delete approach on the aircraft, powering off everything and restarting systems.

‘A Boeing 747-400 ER has 110,000 kilos of fuel…’ the captain started saying over the PA. That’s when I knew we’d be off this plane pretty soon. 'Wunala Dreaming' wasn’t going anywhere.

So back into the QP. The catering staff did a good job pulling as much food as they could from wherever they could. I have no idea what the passengers upstairs were doing, but there’s only so many dips, biscuits, nuts and sliced meat that you can eat before you feel like you need some real food.

Just after 6pm we were told that the crew had gone out of hours. No great shock there – perhaps they could have found some during the afternoon? Even in Sydney (1 hr away?) So we were sent upstairs to the gate to get hotel vouchers. Things were organised like an Anarchist convention. The gate staff kept coming up with different stories like:

“We’re going to delay the flight until 12pm tomorrow…”

Then this classic Qantas line:

“We are going to have to leave at 5am tomorrow morning because we need the aircraft in Los Angeles for Qantas operational requirements – or else we will cancel!” In summary, you should be thankful for the privilege of flying this great Airline. Then the ramifications of a 5am departure sink in. 5am of course equates to having to check in at 3am to board a flight which lands at LAX at 1am west coast time – soooo convenient for those with connecting flights. Someone suggested moving it back to a more rational time. No way would QF budge on this one.


Anyhow, they attempted to split us into a taxi line and a hotel line. One thing that was shocking was that they sent First and Business passengers upstairs into the mess (and because we’d been in the lounge we were at the end of every line). If I’d paid around $10,000 for my ticket, I’d expect to be escorted back landside and shown to the hotel personally by someone from the lounge. But they just washed their hands of the whole thing. I think they were glad to see us out of the lounge so that they could save on the food and drinks bill.

After much chaos including a supposed break for immigration (however we were on departures level so we got turned around) the nice woman at the gate said that we were stuck there as Customs wont process you back into Australia until after 7pm! Customs were pretty good when we got there… “How was your trip?” and I overheard one person asking how you’d fill in your arrival form – country that you spent the most time in whilst overseas? Australia!

We were all checked in to the Hilton across the road. We thought that Qantas might put us economy plebs in the Formula One but at least they did the right thing in this regard. The hotel has two lifts, so just getting into the lift to reception took the better part of half an hour.

The Hilton people were excellent. It was apparent that they’d planned for this kind of thing (something that Qantas, as an airline, don’t from all appearances). Signage was up, all positions manned. They were handing round lollies and had simplified the check in process as much as possible. Mine took 25 seconds once I got to the desk.

We elected not to get dinner at the hotel, which was a smart move as by all accounts it took them a while to get things organised due to having 200 unexpected guests for dinner. McDonalds was a lot quicker!

Having just got to sleep at around 10pm, I get a phone call from Qantas looking for someone going to HNL… greeeat! Managed to get back to sleep around 12am for a 3am wakeup call.

After getting organised, bolted over to the Qantas Business Class/Qantas Club checkin and waited till around 5am to get checked in. Of course everyone in the Business line has connections all over the place (like us to Lima) so there was a lot of sorting out going on.

We were then told that checkin was on hold as there was noone from Melbourne Security to xray the bags. And then Customs weren’t staffed to handle us. Joy!

The QF manager for MEL then arrived and told us of ANOTHER problem. We would run into no immigration/customs at LAX as they only work till midnight. So we stopped checking everyone in; after about 30 minutes of sitting on bags (just what you want your premium pax to be doing) they then came to the conclusion we had already reached that it would be better to check people in to go to LAX anyhow, even if we have to sit on the ground in LAX. At least we’d be closer to the destination.

We hit the muffin/coffee stand with our $14 vouchers (probably a very profitable day for that operation) and then went to the club, where I’m posting this now.

The QF manager for MEL has just been in and informed us (at 7am) that

- we can’t land in LAX before 6am because they wont let us sit on the tarmac before then waiting for Customs to open;
- and anyhow Wunala Dreaming has gone tech (again) so we need a substitute aircraft;
- we’re doing an aircraft swap with the inbound QF flight from LAX, its another ER so we don’t have to offload people which is a plus; BUT
- the flight crew are now out of hours so they’ll operate MEL-SYD
- we’ll then refuel and swap crew in SYD and go on to LAX arriving around 7am local time there. Refuel will add another hour to an already lengthy trip.

This has been appallingly handled by Qantas as a whole. It’s not the individuals that are the problem, it’s the overall response. It was like this has NEVER happened before. Absolute chaos at the gate, and in the lounge. Most of the passengers have been pretty good about it (up until 5 minutes ago).

The treatment of premium pax in First and Business (remember, its all about you) in particular is absolutely shocking. They should have been rebooked across to LAX this morning on regular scheduled flights through Sydney, rather than made to sit on their bags in the checkin hall. I hate to think what it’s like up at the gate.

I’ll keep you posted if we have any more developments.