Unacceptable QF Communication, Mismanagement and Question on Customer Rights (QF1 23.12)

Hi All,

While these things are frustrating there's probably not a lot you can do. You'll maybe get some token bonus points as compensation. The reason being weather pretty much gets QF entirely off the hook. They don't have catering facilities in Al Ain, so getting food would not have been easy, but it would have been nice if they went and got all the passengers pizza or something from in town.

You can complain to the Consumer Advocate for airlines - they have occasionally managed to secure me a refund where the airline was holding out.

What I don't understand is if the delay was that substantial why they didn't organize ground transport from Al Ain to Dubai or at least let passengers disembark there if they wanted to. It's not like they were stopping in a third country - most people on that plane would've been allowed to enter the UAE and getting from Al Ain to Dubai is less than a two hour drive.

elliot dot org lists some Airline contacts including QF they are supposed to be reasonably current

How did the crew "deliberately lie to" the passengers in Al Ain? How were they to know about ongoing connections etc? And what would you like compensation for? For the fact that the airline had to divert (along with multiple Emirates/other airlines flights) because of fog at Dubai Airport? I suggest you Google News search 'Dubai fog' to get some perspective and see the absolute mess the fog created for airlines. To save you the time:

Fog - nothing any airline can do about. Hundreds were in the same situation as your wife. Pity the passengers in economy while your wife was sitting in J.

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Thanks a lot for all your answers. I do understand that weather cannot be predicted and I mentioned it is not QF's fault that they had to divert. However, all that happened from there onwards was a total mess and I expect QF to do much, much better than that.

There is no perfect or ideal way to handle an extraordinary situation such as this. You just have to let it unfold.

Letting customers off the plane isn't as simple as it sounds.

Was QF1 the only plane diverted to Al Ain? No.

Where does an airline order food from at Al Ain for 510 people at short notice, and how does crew pay for it? Very unlikely none of the crew had ever been to Al Ain before, yet the OP expects crew to go shopping at what time in the morning? It landed at 1am, so what food outlets would be open at that hour to meet the needs of 510 people? Would any food purchased by crew for 510 passengers be assured of being safe enough to meet QF health and safety standards?

When they arrived at DXB, were other delayed flights causing some unexpected problems? Of course.

Could QF have communicated better? Of course, this single issue being the one area that QF regularly lets pax down on.

“Qantas ruins Christmas” the headline across many newspapers this morning with QF ruling out compensation, so I would imagine you will be hard pressed to get anything in return for the ordeal. QF rely on the fact that once the emotion has passed you will continue to fly them regardless, so then the choice comes back to you as to whether the lack of compensation will result in you booking with another airline next time.

I suspect for many of the reasons mentioned up thread (lack of facilities, catering and customs) that Al Ain would not be QFs preferred alternate airport, and I don't think I've heard of QF going there before,, butth 100s of other flights also diverted from DXB they may not have had a choice (there is only limited parking bays at most airports), and an A380 diverting anywhere will create waves of disruption, particularly over Xmas when many flights are full.

Al ain is a modern reasonably large airpoort (opened in 1994!)

I actually can't get over the armchair CEOs sitting here coming up with solutions. Let's put it this way, if it were all that easy, they would have done it.