New Amadeus System Bumping Qantas Economy Passengers Off!
 

I believe this is related to Qantas' roll-out of the Amadeus Altéa system

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A new Qantas check-in system is causing chaos, with economy class passengers being kicked off flights to make way for business class frequent flyers.

The system limits seating for economy passengers to the rear of the plane - even if spare seats are available towards the front of the plane - giving priority to business class flyers.

One staff member, who asked not to be named, said it had taken the check-in process back 10 years.

"Basically, if you're not important enough for Qantas then you're either down the back of the plane or you're not on the plane," he said.

But Qantas bosses denied the system was affecting customers.

"Customers won't notice a difference at all," a spokesman said.

The Australian Services Union said it was aware of problems.

While it has been labelled "a nightmare" by Qantas employees, bosses said it was a "supreme" way to manage bookings.

More at Courier Mail (News Corp).

Readers comments on the article here.

I'm possibly missing something here, but why would the front sections of economy be reserved for business class passengers? Would business class passengers be happy put in economy class?

I only looked at the thread title.

Is the reservation system actually killing people?

If the plane was too small for the passengers, then it sounds as though a substitution has taken place

Personally, I see this as a non-story ... it appears to be based on one passenger being bumped.

The real story appears - superficially - to be a lack of training on the new system for check-in staff. This should come as no surprise to anyone who had to explain the new PYOB BPs with bar-code to gate-staff when they were first introduced.

HOWEVER lines like "The system is the latest problem for Qantas in what has been a dire month." are appearing all too commonly of late. If this continues - and it does appear as though the Flying Roo is in the sights of the Australian Media at present - then it must start to have an effect on the general public perception of the company.

BD

Quality Journalism .... not :rolleyes:

It's a pity that journalists generally fall well short of the high standards they aim to hold everyone else to.

Bumping in a airline sense generally means pax is denied boarding to the flight they are booked on and are bumped to another flight. I doubt this is happening

Poor journalism again and using airline jargon they do not understand

Having just performed an online check-in for myself (QFF Gold) and my wife (QFF Bronze) for the same flight (booked on separate tickets) I can see where this perception might have come from. For me I had access to select from about 80% of the seats on the plane, whereas for my wife there was about 30% available for selection, and all down the back half of the plane.

Certainly a change from the previous online check-in experience though, where very few seats were available to select from no matter what the status :D.

Appears that the new system does not pre-allocate seats, rather it notionally allocates seats, the seat is only registered as taken when the passenger actually checks in (hence the increased availability to pick seats)

eg. on a full flight with 40 rows
20% WP, 30% SG, 20% PS, 30% nada.
First WP to check-in has choice of the whole plane.
SGs can pick from 8 rows back
PSs can pick from 20 rows back
etc.

Means much more benefit from OLCI at 24hr mark

Another plus in my book - must remember to book the wife on a separate PNR. ;)

BD

Everyone who needs to use CM has recently done the training. Like anything else it's a case of taking a little while to get used to it. Parts of it I like but other parts are not all that great. Time will tell I guess.

Alright before this speculation gets out of hand (and believe me, this article is way off base with its story!!!), let me explain this concept.

With Qantas' switch of reservation system, there are alot of behind the scenes changes that have taken place. One of these new concepts is called 'Theoretical Seats,' and believe me when I say that it is an excellent idea in theory, but it will take some time to iron out the issues Qantas is currently going through. Basically, Qantas has setup a list order (call it a value) of each pax for each and every flight (as well as values for individual seats on an aircraft). The ranking order takes into account FF status, PNR associations, SSRs, booking class, etc.

So, behind the scene before a pax even shows up to check-in, the system has allocated 'theoretical seats' for EVERY pax on that flight, depending the ranking order. What this means is that a pax with a high ranking order will have access to almost every seat available on the flight. A pax with a low ranking order will ONLY SEE SEATS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN BLOCKED BY THE 'THEORETICAL SEATS' FOR HIGHER RANKING PAX. Generally, if a flight is booked full (oversold), a low-ranking pax will see maybe 1 or 2 seats, or none at all available to them.

What this concept tries to do, is give pax with FF status, higher fare tickets, etc. better seats on an aircraft when pre-assignment is out of the question (QF doesn't pre-assign domestic seats, same for intra-Europe flights and Eurpoean carriers). Now, the issues that QF has had with this function relate to the way in which it had set up the ranking of pax. Families were checking in for flights and being spread out throughout an aircraft, and FF bookings (for status pax) were showing up at the bottom of the ranking order. QF has since fixed a lot of these issues internally, and regarding the article in question, THIS HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH BUMPING PAX. ZERO, ZILCH, NADA. I'm not sure where that idea came from.

Now, the most difficult as you can imagine, is a check-in agent trying to explain this to pax as they are checking in bright and early for a flight, and not being allowed to access an open seat. It's a very complex situation, and not an easy one to explain.

So, hopefully that sheds some light onto the issue, but I would definitely take the article with a grain of salt, because there is very little valuable substance to it.

Thankyou denCSA for a VERY interesting post. ^

I'll be testing it with OLCI tomorrow morning...

Nice explanation denCSA.

It appears QF's planning and testing may not have been all they could have been. Making a major change will always throw up unexpected problems, but I would have thought the issue of, say, families being spread throughout the plane vs. being seated together would have been one of the more obvious things to have dealt wirh prior to implementation.

Still, I wasn't there, so I'm only speculating!