GrodsCorp

Qantas are arse

Monday 3 December 2007, 7:53 am

The Editor

Categories: Corporate stupidity, GrodsNews

Tags: airlines, flight, Qantas

McBec and I went to Sydney on the weekend to help my Dad celebrate his 60th birthday (happy birthday, Dad!) and thanks to the awesomeness of parents flew courtesy of Dad’s credit card. This meant that we boarded a Qantas plane for the first time in ages since our tightarseness usually means Virgin or Jetstar bookings.

On arrival at the terminal one first procures one’s boarding pass using Qantas’ trademarked QuickCheck (sic) machine before joining the bag drop line. No different to the other carriers except in one crucial area: Qantas had a whopping three surly staff members behind desks to deal with the massive line of bag dropping passengers. We arrived over an hour before our return flight from Sydney to Melbourne and I joined the queue in plenty of time but it took so long for the line to move that there was a “final call” for my flight before I’d even dropped my bag.

Then when we arrived back in Melbourne there was a long wait at the baggage collection area before two 767s worth of bags from Sydney and Perth were spewed onto the same carousel (despite two carousels being free just beside it) so 700 angry passengers attempted to elbow, spit and bite their way to the front.

Qantas are shite.

7 Comments

Bridgit Gread (Monday 3 December 2007, 11:09 am) #

I’m flying to Europe with Qantas at Christmas, I hope and expect that their international service is better than this.
krypto (Tuesday 4 December 2007, 2:32 pm) #

oh yeah, now I get it, the title is like “Qant-arse”. Yeah they suck alright.
They have really dropped their bundle as far as standards go over the past ten years. It’s only a matter of time until their “never crashed” status goes too I hear (talking to someone who manages a maintainence crew for them).
Jangari (Tuesday 4 December 2007, 2:39 pm) #

Damn straight. I had much the same experience flying to Adelaide recently; 3 baggage drop staff working some four flights, 90 minutes in the cue (lucky I knew this to be the case and arrived 2 (!) hours before my domestic flight), and one carousel operating when I came back to Sydney, to service again, four flights.

The net result is they employ less people, charge the same, if not more for tickets, and siphon the cream off the top for the directors’ salaries.

Profiteers.
Skeptic (Tuesday 4 December 2007, 4:02 pm) #

Bridget

Good luck (with both the holiday (?) and the flight. I flew to Thailand in October with Thai Airlines and I can say they were so much better than Qantas - food, service, leg room.

Be sure to check out http://www.seatguru.com to find and book the best seats. As invaluable an online resource as tripadvisor.
John Surname (Tuesday 4 December 2007, 4:16 pm) #

If I could afford to fly, I wouldn’t fly Qantas.
Mikey (Wednesday 5 December 2007, 5:58 pm) #

” Qantas are arse ”

They should fully rebrand with that.
billybob (Thursday 13 December 2007, 8:28 am) #

Even with this tail of Qantas’s sub-service, I will take Queensland and NT Air Service any time over BA, (Big Arse). I won’t bore you with foreign stories right now, (I’m on a shit Austrian keyboard), but I have had the misfortune of travelling BA 4 times in the last four weeks. Their service has been the throwing a cheese and pickle sandwich at me from the aisle, this is of course as long as the have finished their conversation.

BA think that air travel is still the same as it was in 1983, (just thankful to get to your destination). The people ’serviving’ me were, I think, hand picked at the age of 14 and were not allowed to finish school, if they in fact, ever went.

All I can say is give me Virgin, Singapore and Emirates anytime. These companies could spit on me and it would still be better than BA.

And as far as ’self service’ check ins go. They can get fucked. They might be saving the airline personel costs, but the customer experience is awful and waiting times I think have doubled. Yes, they assist business men with no check in baggage, who by the way seem to be able to carry-on a suitcase, suit holdall and a laptop bag, but most travellers now seem to have to wait for ‘Marge’ to ask you the same questions you’ve just electonically answered.

I have been travelling on ‘paper’ tickets, (yes, I’m still stuck in 1997 myself), but BA staff look at them as if I’m handing them a ticking bomb. E-tickets are still relatively new yes? And the fact that I have been issued ‘paper’ tickets means they should still be trained in accepting them. Tell me I’m being unreasonable!