Qantas
Depart from: Sydney To: London - On date: 25/Jun/2009 - Flight Type: Economy
We recently flew with Qantas to London from Sydney (QF31) on the 21st March 2009.
I booked the flights for my family back in November 2008 and made sure I chose to fly in the new A380 airbus. We were looking forward to flying the new plane as my wife and I have been traveling to the UK since 1992. I had been looking forward to going home for a visit for sometime so that my family could see our son who was 28 months in March. When we set off on our journey our flight was delayed by an hour due to teething faults on the new plane, and unfortunately this was a trend that continued all through our flights. We were stuck on the tarmac with outside temps of 27c and no cooling inside the plane as it was on auxiliary power. Our young son was overheating, we had to fan him with flight safety brochures, he was crying and screaming due to the excess heat. He kept saying “I
want to get off”, our journey hadn’t even started. Luckily as we started flying he settled down.
I believe we were late with most of our departures both to and from London due to issues with the new airbus. The next memorable moment was when we boarded the flight (QF32 London departure 18/4/09) at Singapore back to Sydney.
We boarded at 9.40 am Singapore time; I had the sky cam on watching what was happening outside when a fuel truck pulled up underneath the plane. The captain came over the P.A system advising that we had to put on more fuel and the paperwork had to be signed. We were 1 ½ hours late sitting on a stationary plane until we took off.
We rang the call bell at the beginning of the delay and asked the flight attendant for a kids pack to keep our son entertained – we never got one!
As we approached Sydney almost 2 hours late, we were almost at touch down when the captain aborted the landing. We flew around again and just before touch down our son vomited everywhere. I went to grab a sick bag but it wasn’t there, I then remembered that a flight attendant had given it to another passenger further down the plane between London and Singapore. My wife used her sick bag as well as my son’s sick bag, but this wasn’t sufficient. If it wasn’t for the other passengers supplying more sick bags we would have been stuck. I pressed the call button and realised that no flight attendant could attend as we were landing.
Just before we reached the gate to disembark doing 10-15kmh, I was kneeling in my seat to try and get out of the vomit and settle my son and at this point a male attendant shouted across the cabin “sit doooooown in yooour seat sir” in a very demeaning manner so everybody could see and hear. While I appreciate that I should have been sitting down due to safety reasons, I do believe it could have been done more tactfully. I always obey the safety instructions on flights and would not put my safety or anyone else’s at risk.
When we finally stopped I gained the attention of a flight attendant, I told him that our son had been sick and he just said put a blanket on the seat to cover up the vomit, at no time was there any offers of assistance, the passengers were much more helpful and concerned. We managed to change our sons clothing and put his dirty clothes in a vomit bag as supplied by other passengers but when we went to clean ourselves up we couldn’t as the plane had stopped there was no running water in the toilets. Yet again no assistance was offered by the flight crew. Fortunately, the passengers offered to carry off our hand luggage and helped my wife pop on my sons shoes etc as everyone was disembarking.
We found that the crews on our flights from Armidale to Sydney and back were fantastic compared to those on the international flights. We were very concerned that our son wouldn’t want to fly back to Armidale because of his experience on the last flight. They took a real interest in my son, and that made a huge difference to the enjoyment of the flight for all of us.
We found the whole experience on the international flights very disappointing. This time the service appears to be much lower than when we last flew in 2004. At some points we hardly saw any attendants at all. The poor selections in the self serve snack bars which were empty a lot of the time is no substitute for personal service. My son wanted a banana and in the fruit bowl, all there was to choose from was apples. I always thought fruit bowl meant a variety of fruits! Also the snack bars did not really cater for a lot of tastes, the pizzas biscuits slices were quite spicy and not suitable for children, and the cookies too were large and very rich – again the snacks on offer were not suitable for long haul flights as you require foods that are nutrious.
My wife and I have had an ongoing joke about our national airlines (Qantas & British Airways); she has always revelled in how much better the service was with Qantas.
Now she is very disappointed with the poor quality from Qantas as it is just as bad as BA.
To top it all off our flight back to Armidale was cancelled; we were staying with some friends in Sydney for a few days and were due to fly out on the 21st April at 12.30 pm back to Armidale. This threw our plans as we were going to be 3 hours late getting home.
I got an email a week prior to flying when we were in the UK advising that our flight had been cancelled and we had to catch a later one. I spoke to another passenger on the Armidale flight and he said he had been trying to get the 12.30 flights for a few weeks prior but none of them were available, I can only assume that Qantas cut this flight as there weren’t enough passengers as often happens here in Armidale.
My wife and I feel really let down by Qantas if this is the new service offered on the new A380 then we would rather fly on the old 747’s, now that our son is older we can travel more but I’m not so sure if we want to fly with Qantas anymore.
My parents flew on the Singapore airlines A380 last May and said the service was excellent and the crews couldn’t have done more.
In the current financial crisis I would have expected the service with Qantas to have been excellent to keep passengers returning.
Once again my wife and I feel bitterly disappointed with the service offered by Qantas.
Qantas has a good reputation but if the service that you are offering at present continues then your reputation will only last a short time.
Thank you for your email and taking the time to advise us of your concerns.
I would like to apologise for the experience you had and I am sorry there was a need for you to write to us. Please accept my apologies that you did not receive the level of service expected from a premium airline.
We strive to provide exceptional service and customer feedback plays an important role in our continuous improvement process. It also helps us strengthen our commitment to customer service. I would like to assure you that your feedback has been forwarded to the relevant management as part of this process and I have logged your feedback in our database.
I would again like to thank you for taking the time to contact us. We value your ongoing loyalty, and hope that we have an opportunity to welcome you aboard Qantas in the near future.
Kind Regards
Customer Care Executive
Qantas Airways Ltd
Address: QCA5 203 Coward Street | Mascot NSW 2020
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