msm2000uk

No, Im actually serious.

People who booked ex-EU can start from LHR, and there are plenty of people who have designed their routing with QR to change from Ex-EU-DOH-AKL to LHR-DOH-HKG-SYD-AKL.

A major TP boost, and no positioning flight.

Personally I think that's far more than QR would be expected to do.

RUN4FUN

I agree, no reason to set our expectations high with QR.

I have had cancellation/rerouting issues with Ryanair and Pegasus the last weeks, and they both rerouted me, THEN emailed me (both) AND even called me (Pegasus), both giving me due notifications asap, AND the choice to get 100% payback if i should prefere to cancel.

From QR? Just the silent fog....

msm2000uk

I agree QR have not advised their customers, but that is because they are working behind the scenes to find ways to satisfy the vast majority of their customers - by linking with other airlines to get their booked passengers to AKL.

However, the terms they have permitted (including of course a full refund) are excellent, and far better than I have seen from any airline (except AA).

iluvdoco

Has anyone tried booked the AKL-DOH/DOH-AKL segment using AA miles? AA has yet to notify me of the change.

Has anyone been able to preemptively change the routing without incurring a $150 change fee?

N1Rotate

I have had a number of flight cancellations and changes with QR for flights in (mostly intra-gulf and once to Europe) and I have always been contacted by phone, in all the cases there were last minute cancellations or changes that occurred a few days before the flight. I know people on the other cancelled flights in the summer and they have been contacted and in cases proactively rebooked. Perhaps QR are not prioritising contacting the AKL pax and instead concentrating on the cancellations on 15 other routes over the summer since a week or two won't make much of a difference for people who have booked in December or January.

Lefly

In your opinion/experience, what about a travel starting from PSA on 5th Feb, but with the DOH-AKL leg departing exactly on early hours of 6th Feb?

msm2000uk

Tough one, but I would try and argue that your journey to AKL commences on 5th February. You may not be successful, but it's certainly worth a shot.

IAN-UK

You a offer an extremely generous interpretation of the airline's handling of the chaos created by reckless commercial planning.

One worries the luxe veneer is hiding similar carelessness in other, more critical, divisions.

msm2000uk

I'm fairly certain QR had a backup plan in place, should airframe deliveries go amiss.

It's an assumption, but I'd guess Airbus are liable for some sort of delay fine.

N1Rotate

I wouldn't call it carelessness, there were a lot a of buffers built in but the delays really got out of hand and other airlines were affected. Look at how many A350s and A320NEOs were delivered so far this year. QR were expecting a total of 19-20 A350s for the end of the year, but that went down to 16 total and they had a further buffer built into that. Airbus is still confident of that number, QR was but is no longer confident in the supply chain and hence the recent change. QR was being proactive in this case due to feedback from their teams that are based at the manufacturer.

I can't go into detail because this involves my former job. The airline monitoring and quality process starts before the aircraft completes assembly, so lets say major component X falls off a rigging and gets damaged (this has happened). The manufacturer might believe it is repairable, the customer might request a completely new component. For an A330 for example there will be extra stock of this component or wait times to get it from the manufacturer are not an issue. For the A350 the supply of the component will be more challenging.

Lefly

Thanks. Maybe they will move the date again I think I will wait a bit before calling.
In any case my mother is already happy to have the chance to go half world away in J... (and me happy that I got this fare )

IAN-UK

The Airbus supply wobble has been with us for some time: in spite of expressions of confidence delivery dates have slipped, and slipped further. There is precedence for this, and careful airlines are wary of building new frames into their schedules, and have strategies for dealing with delivery delays.

QR, perhaps goaded into willy-waving by neighbouring Gulf carriers, announced dramatic new niche routes that would depend on strengthening its fleet with new aircraft capable of freeing up its 77L fleet.

Doha - Auckland "longest in the world" was one of those routes, and it was taken through to commercial marketing. With delivery of the A350 stalled, or limping along, and despite Airbus expressions of confidence, the brashness of QR to go ahead with the commercial launch of the route might seem unwise.

To its credit, the airline had in place code-share agreements that allow the destination to be served indirectly from Doha. Indeed, some suggest the exercise hasn't worked out too badly for QR, with the airline now in a position to wring further concessions from the manufacturer.

IAN-UK

Well, yes, the backup plan appears to be a stopping/transfer service using code-shares.

Nice for those harvesting points and miles , but sub-optimal for others.

N1Rotate

Well they have taken the delivery delays into account, they built in buffers and if you see last year they didn't have to cancel flights and other than equipment substitutions they managed to keep the schedule integrity and also carry out a refit program on the A330/B777 that kept up to 3 aircraft off the line at once.

They are now 7 aircraft short (1 aircraft is 6 months late already) yet until June (when Atlanta starts) there is no significant impact on the schedule, as contingencies they delayed aircraft retirements and slowed down aircraft refit programs to keep more aircraft in the air. For any program the pace of deliveries usually improves but this has not been the case with the A350 so far, on the A350 Airbus expect to deliver 50 aircraft in 2016 yet we are in the middle of May and only 6 have been delivered so far. Even when you have plans, back ups, contingencies some times plans don't work out.

You can't expect airlines not to plan to utilise aircraft that are planned to be delivered. They planned with a reasonable buffer and now they are proactively cancelling flights and delaying schedules expecting this buffer to be eaten up. Especially for long haul flights you need long lead times to market and sell the flights, it is reasonable for an airline to plan to schedule an aircraft due in October to launch a route in December rather than wait to October and then launch a route with short notice or keep an aircraft on the ground for months. There has to be a balance between building in contingencies for a delay (e.g. 2-3 months) and commercial requirements.

Even if no issues are identified during production, some issues are only recognised later. There is an example of an aircraft that spent about 1 year of testing before finally being rejected. The issue was only identified as the aircraft started taxiing and it was expected to be an easy fix but the issue was never resolved. You can also have bad luck with ramp damage or bird strike damage which on an A320 or A330 isn't that much of an issue due to the availability of parts but on an A350 it could take much longer to source replacement parts.

Yes the situation is messed up, yes its embarrassing for QR, yes they should have handled it better but to believe that QR hasn't already built in buffers and had contingencies in place is not accurate.

Dan1113

Are there any signs that there any improvements at Airbus and that deliveries will speed up over the coming months, allowing the new predicted start date of this flight to actually happen?

Given it has the tagline of "longest in the world" (and they ran such a big sale that made many people book very far in advance, when normally they would not have), I would have thought they would want to prioritise it and sacrifice/delay other routes instead.