Incident at BME
 

Spare a thought for us in the QP at BME today.

The once a week direct flight from BME to SYD (the QF1043) has been cancelled as the aircraft has gone so seriously tech it's not gonna get us there today.

It's a full 737-800... all hotels in Broome are full, as are flights out to PER. Right now the ground staff are trying to get us to SYD sometime TOMORROW.

Aghghghghgh.

It's probably even worse for those not in the QP!

Do report back how they resolve this. Are they going to keep the QP open all night if required?

Good luck!

JS

Aircraft is VXG I think from squinting at it. Valve on the fuel pump has failed - they can't get fuel into the right wing.

BME is so small they are having to fly in an engineer to fix the problem.

The solution seems to be typically QF - Gate tells us to contact the checkin desk. Checkin desk says they have no authority to change route, and tells us to contact QF direct. 131313 tells us that we ought to be in the air so why are we calling, and it must be dealt with on the ground.

Aghghghghgh!

The QP in the tin shed is so small that it's already runout of wine. And seats.

Yup, -VXG it is indeed (good eyesight!)

I'm interested in knowing how QF deal with the problem. Please do keep us updated.

IIRC, a fellow FT member once o/nighted (slept) in the Alice Springs Qantas Club after a BAe146 went u/s in CNS and was unable to operate the flight - I believe like BME, all the hotels were full.

BME QP is small, so must be a squeeze! When I was there I was surprised at how much food and drink was available :)

Please keep us updated! :) ^

Rgds

The engineer never made it - his flight went tech too. So we are waitting for a new aircraft - and crew - from PER to take us to SYD.

2 hours in and we get an A$8 food voucher.

3 hours in and the QP runs out of all alcohol & food. We are told that no more will be delivered due to "licencing restrictions". :(

3 hours 30 later the public bar downstairs runs out of lemons for the Corona.

4 hours (6pm) in and we are told we will get a hot dinner.

4 hours 30 later the public bar downstairs runs out of white wine and XXXX.

5 hours later 50 Eagle Boys pizzas are delievered - and are taken through Xray.

5 hours and 10 minutes later we're told we won't get dinner until the PER flight leaves so they don't scoff it - and the PER flight is late.

6 hours later (8pm) we get our cold pizza. The QP now looks like there's been a MAJOR party, with bottles, cans, and pizza boxes everywhere.

6 hours 30 later the public bar downstairs runs out of red wine and Crown. VB is still available.

7 hours later (9pm) we get a letter telling us that our fright is now scheduled for midnight. Blankets are handed out for those in the QP. I leave for the Kimberly Klub, and a quiet Corona. WITH lemon.. :cool:

More, I'm sure, anon.

Enjoy your beer and I hope you have a comfortable flight back to Sydney, whenever that is!

Looks like the flight was cancelled:

I'm hearing QF1043 departed BME @ 03.18am and recently just touched down at Sydney :confused:

Thanks for the updates lorkers!

Rgds

Interesting reading thanks lorkers for the updates. To run out of booze in the QP what a disgrace :eek:

Hopefully arrived before the fog! :D

Perhaps someone will write a song about it one day :p

Well you have to admit that there's nothing so lonesome, so morbid or drear ...

That was a shocker.

I got back from clubbing at 11.30pm to find that there was no reason for me to hurry - the flight was indeed showing as cancelled, but because every other flight out of BME is chocker for days, there looked like the possibility of an enforced holiday. Which was tempting... if only there was somewhere to sleep. All hotel rooms are booked solid too.

Thankfully the manager at BME got SYD to send out another 737-800 with a fresh crew - and we were told it would leave at 2am.

So I bedded down in the QP - or rather tried to. Blankets were handed out in the Club while I was in the Klub (does this sound like a song from Cabaret?) and I missed them... and in the QP pax had resorted to ripping the cushions from the chairs to make matresses. I had neither, so bedded down under the computer desks, using copies of the WA as a mattress. I found that copies of the QF inflight mag, covered in the t-shirt make a good pillow. Finally, a copy of the SMH make good sheets on top.

Remember I was one of the most comfortable ones!

At 2am we got a "flight put back to 3am due to fog" call... finally boarded at 3.10am, and took off at 3.18am.

Amazingly, the crew onboard insisted on operating a full meal service on board, even though we all wanted to sleep - and thanks to pretty violent turbulence in the first hour, it was 2 hours in before it was served. Food was supper! Remember this was 5am local, 7am Sydney time! But it was what was loaded on the original flight, so they served it.

So, we finally got into SYD just before 10am. An amazing 16 hours late.

Grrrr... just in time for me to jump onto a Deathstar flight... I'm not sure what is worse! :(

At least you had real newspapers and mags in the QP....last time I travelled with Deathstar the only reading material available was a Cisco Catalog :confused: :( :)

BD

i am very interested in the qantas-JQ connection. I assume that the op had booked the original jq flight the following day. If qantas services are delayed or cancelled, would they assist in jetstar bookings. The 2 airlines are essentially one company and i would think qantas would do it.

I'm not aware of any JQ service into BME. Only QF mainline and QFlink.

The OP went on to a JQ flight leaving from SYD.

At least not at this point in time, there aren't. I dare say they are on the JQ radar.

Whoops - apologies for misreading. :o

Exactly correct.

I had planned to get to to SYD in the evening, dinner, sleep, then pop into the office before getting the lunchtime JQ flight to OOL.

What I ended up doing was like a military experiment in sleep deprivation, followed by the hike from SYD T3 to T2, wait for 2 hours for JQ to bother staffing a desk, dump my bag, and then get refused entry to the SYD QP as I was on a JQ fright.

Infact, as an aside, I MUST have been sleep deprived, because I didn't notice that my hotel in OOL sneekily converted my Visa card slip into GBP at a rate of A$1.9=1GBP without asking me ... and I signed it! Curses... :(

The ticketing issue at BME was interesting... they have no ticket office there, and the service desk told me that all ticketing must be done via 131313. However 131313 told me that if there were any rerouting issues it must be dealt with by the airport staff. I reached deadlock on that one, with no give at all on either side. Interestingly 131313 did tell me that in any case JQ was a totally different company to QF, so if I missed the JQ flight, tough, I qould have to take it up with JQ, not QF. :rolleyes:

Well you may have been stooged then. AFAIK WP, SG and QP all get access when travelling on JQ (I can attest that I did the only time I flew JQ)...Edit: I did get access to QP, not stooged.

Alas BAEC Gold doesn't - it's not a oneWorld flight, even though I booked via the QF website (I know, I know... already discussed). I was just hopping to twatwaffle my way in... but got rumbled.

I guess you felt similar to how I felt in being denied entry to the BA lounge at CDG. In your case you weren't on a OW flight, in my case it wasn't a BA operated lounge and I was flying the wrong class on BA! If BA would pay for you, and QF pay for me then maybe we'd both get into the lounges ;) I ain't holding my breathe however!

Is that common at contract lounges?
I was nearly denied entry at the Bellevue lounge in ZRH because the agent didn't know whether to charge BA (I was flying BA Y ZRH-LHR) or AA (my status FFP). Was let in eventually after a supervisor came along.

My Goodness; In your shoes I would have very nicely related the circumstance of my arrival at SYD T2 QP, being ¾ a day late due to Qantas' problems. Surely admittance would then have been achieved.

:o Aaah! A lack of profile info, combined with (incorrect) assumptions on my part.

As a BAEC Silver I never had problems getting into the QP in Sydney when flying to Hobart on Jetstar. Now I am Gold and just arrived in Australia again as part of a LHR-FRA-SIN-SYD-BNE-PPP itiniery on BA-QF-JQ and I will be very upset if my 3 hour layover in BNE is outside the lounge (the last leg is on Jetstar). Maybe my QF J BP for the previous legs will get me in if the JQ BP doesn't...

JS




Edited to add:

Showed my used SYD-BNE BP at the BNE QP desk and they let me in, no problem.

I have been assured by QP staff at BNE, MEL and SYD T2 that access when flying on JQ is available to ALL OW Emerald and Sapphire members, even though it isn't clearly stated as such in the entry requirements.

Dave

The BNE QP is flexible as gar as entry checking goes. I, a lowly QP NB, have just flashed my card to gain entry without ever showing my OLSI boarding pass that was in my bag.

*** BUMP ***

Just to close this one out, incase you're wondering how it turned out, I used the online comment section on qantas.com.au to point out that sleeping on the floor at BME isn't really what I had in mind for a nit, and a few comments on how it might have been better handled, but complementing the pilot on coming out to speak with us, and for QF for putting on a new plane.

2.5 months later without a word, I've just a letter on my doormat (Wow! Speedy response!), very blandly thanking me for my comments, giving me 10,000 QF miles, and with a cheque for A$150 as comensation for my trouble. :D

Interestingly, I never asked for compensation. Well, can't say fairer! Now, where will 10,000 miles take me... oh, damn... :rolleyes:

You'll need the $150 to pay (some of) the taxes on the award that you use the miles on.