And on the 8th day, God created airline Baggage Services.

December 10, 2011 Leave a comment

The good lord must have been bereft of ideas by that time. What have we done as a society to have Qantas Baggage Services foisted upon us?

Those of you who regularly read this, you know who you are, are quite au fait with my feelings on most things Qantas and the general state trashiness that “the spirit of Australia” has become. Well, have I got news for you, The mess of Qantas in the club lounges and cabin is nothing compared to the mess with Baggage Services. These people know how destroy self esteem. This all started when the automatic bag tags were not recognised by the auto check-in luggage machines – bad start as it was going to involve human interaction. We stood in line at the Qantas Club and Status traveler counter for what seemed like an entirety. The baggage woman then looks up ans walks off leaving 6 or 7 people just standing in the line. Nice. Finally we get to the counter and the second person with a minimum of fuss checks our bags. This was the opening to the total failings at Sydney airport.

Sydney baggage hall. At first I thought I must be standing at the wrong luggage carousel. All the priority luggage came out, then all the rest came out. I thought I was standing at the wrong carousel. No I could see people from the flight near by. When the bags finally arrived, 4th from the end, I said to my daughter, so much fro the priority tags and the guy standing next to me, who I have never seen in my life before, joined in complete agreement. I kid you not, the clowns in baggage services have no idea. Thank you Qantas for being treated so well. It’s the final parting shot as you leave the airport. A two fingered salute to say thank you for flying.

In hindsight, at least they didn’t loose the bags!

Filed under Flying, Travel Tagged with , , , ,

Welcome the resurrection of the Flat Earth Society

December 7, 2011 Leave a comment

Only three weeks till Christmas and I only have one page of bookings on my Qantas schedule or 4 legs to be more accurate. It has been a gruelling 6 months in the tail of the “sprit of Australia” but with the holiday season almost upon us, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is shinning bright.

Looks like Sid has been busy again pressing the buttons to punch out hundreds of thousands emails sprooking the benefits of bonus points up till Christmas. I noticed that the points are being sold to us as “BONUS POINTS – QANTAS 91ST BIRTHDAY”. Does that mean that the shut down was not to force all the parties to Fair Work Australia but ensure that ALL the staff could attend the 91st birthday celebrations. That is so thoughtful of Alan. I can not believe that the unions got so unhappy about the parties!

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Qantas and the Flat Earth Society

I regularly watch, with only a passing interest, the news on the flight.  It’s a grab of the main stories from Channel Nine delivered as a “special presentation” for Qantas.  This means that Mascot have strict editorial control aka, no negative press about the Irish, Qantas, Jetstar or the airline industry in general.  This editorial espionage also extends to the weather, the weather I here you say!.  Who would have thought!  Take Africa for example, It is a massive continent, with some 56 countries, a plethora of cultures, the cradle of modern man and a population of more than a billion but the Flat Earther’s from Mascot can only find Johannesburg in the south.  If we move onto Europe it is only marginally better.  Think Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, The Benelux countries, Spain, Portugal, and Austria to name a few.  In the eye’s of Qantas, none of these places exist.  Not even the original Flat Earther’s were this naïve, ok that is a stretch but you get the idea.  When Magellan sailed from Spain with 5 boats into the unknown he crossed the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and although he personally did not make it past the Philippines, what was left of the rest of his fleet made it back but what they did show was the Earth is round.  If you want on take on the Asian and Middle Eastern airlines, you are going to need more than 4 ports in (2 code share’s) in Europe.

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Qantas – we fly everywhere in Europe as long as you want to fly to London or Frankfurt!

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Happy Travels and I have a final push for the year, next week I am in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.  Woo Hoo!

Filed under Frequent Flyer, Qantanomics, Travel Tagged with , , , ,

Another meltdown at @QantasAirways and @nab struggle with Frequent Flyer Points.

November 30, 2011 Leave a comment

If the immortal words were ever so true, this morning was the morning, “Mascot, we have a problem!”  And what a problem it was.  It seems that the gremlins from Virgin had been watered after midnight and escaped to Qantas.  Now in the “olden days”, this would not have been an issue as when you entered the departures hall you were greeted with a wall of check-in counters and accommodating staff.  These days you get a hand full of staff showing you how to press buttons on a screen and when the gremlins broke into the datacentre, the screens were not co-operating and thus you get monumental delays and my word, Qantas are good at those.

My usual Canberra run would have been a very long and protracted affair today had I not already been in Canberra.  The 7:20 did not depart till 8:57.  I bet Qantas made the poor bastards sit on the plane !

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In summer Channel Nine have classic catch’s and Qantas have classic boarding passes but no car to be won!

Twitter image of a hand-written boarding pass presented to a passenger in Brisbane this morning.

The pen and paper is a nice touch, next tablet and chisel?

The other big news, NAB – more take, less give, I think that is how it goes…..

Qantas mediocrity is legendary, they do it so well, so I was surprised at the ease NAB had got in on the act with the allocation of Frequent Flyer points from cards that are earn points.  This sorry affair started in September 2011 when I noticed that I was missing a couple thousand points on my Frequent Flyer statement.  I phoned 1300 number on the back of my card and that is when the fun started.

After spending an hour explaining that there was an error, that it was a bank issue (remembering that at the NAB customer charter indicates that our faeces does not stink) and asked what were they going to do to fix it, I got no where.  Eventually, I was told, some one would ring me back.  Too their credit, they did get back to me and guess what – still my fault.  The rocket scientists in the NAB loyalty department do not consider customer loyalty to be a high priority on their to do lists.  Faeces, smell, ring a bell!  The more give, less take was wearing thin.  After a false start with the NAB Resolve team (another sorry story) I finally got some where and guess what – “Docklands, we have a problem”.  It would appear that a flood of complaints came in after mine and the rocket scientists finally joined the dots (they only had configure 1 to 2!).  What happened next,  the bank has still not issued, and I have looked, any acknowledgement of the problem.  Furthermore they still have not apologised for the error and after 5 follow up emails and a few more phone calls we are getting the points in January 2012 currently as of email 5 today. I did get a letter a month ago from the NAB Resolve team saying the problem had been resolved.

Moral of the story

  • “More give, Less take” only works when nothing goes wrong!
  • when dealing with third parties about Qantas Frequent Flyer points, large quantities of pseudoephedrine may be required.  At one point, a dose of the green dream was looking appealing.
  • All ways check your Frequent Flyer points – you have paid for them physically and mentally!
  • The words “benefit of the doubt” and “bank” do not sit well in one sentence,think oil and water.

Next time, I have done some research and Ferdinand Magellan was wrong.  In Mascot the world is FLAT !

Filed under Flying, Frequent Flyer, Qantanomics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Qantas, private equity? chaos? QRed just went nowhere!

November 28, 2011 Leave a comment

The upheaval in global aviation left Qantas boss Alan Joyce with little choice but to propose a subsidiary Asian carrier, which infuriated the unions. Now the upheaval in global markets, courtesy of Europe’s problems, has reportedly forced him to abandon those plans in favour of an alliance with Malaysia Airlines. And all the while those private equity rumours just won’t go away, such is the state of things at Qantas these days – chaotic.

The European debt crisis looks to have scuttled the controversial plans of Qantas Airways boss Alan Joyce for a separate Asian-based carrier, but it can’t squash rumours of a private equity tilt at the flying kangaroo. According to the Australian Financial Review, the turmoil in Europe has spooked Qantas management and they’re preparing to dump a planned multi-million dollar investment in a subsidiary Asian airline in favour of a less risky alliance with Malaysia Airlines. While unions might claim this as a victory, the paper says Qantas is firm in its stance on the job security claims of the unions.

The news comes after speculation re-emerged over the weekend of a private equity bidder for Qantas . According to The Weekend Australian, former Qantas boss Geoff Dixon and John Singleton considered taking a strategic stake in Qantas three months ago, but were turned off by a darkening outlook for equity markets. The theory is that someone with greater capital firepower might still be hanging around. The indicative $700 million bid by Private Equity Partners for Spotless Group has fuelled rumours of increased private equity activity in the Australian market, despite the obvious turmoil in Europe, and much of it has centred on Qantas . While Dixon wasn’t ready to ride the current market waves with his own money – the paper says investment banker Mark Carnegie, Singleton and Dixon are set to launch a $200 million pub fund instead, which could list on the ASX – in Qantas he said it would not be surprising if other players were taking a look at his former employer.

via BREAKFAST DEALS: Qantas chaos | Alexander Liddington-Cox | Wheels and Deals | Business Spectator.

Filed under News, Qantanomics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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