Business class rage over Qantas delay

[Ryan N]

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/...014090,00.html

Business class rage over Qantas delay
By Larissa Cummings
June 03, 2008 05:02pm

A QANTAS international flight has been delayed for almost 24 hours due to mechanical problems. Angry business class passengers on the Singapore-bound flight QF31 had to be subdued by airport police officers this afternoon after they became abusive towards airline staff.

The flight, which is code-shared with Air Malta's KM2031 and British Airways flight BA7371, was scheduled to leave Sydney at 4.55pm yesterday.

The Qantas website lists the departure time as 4.30pm today - almost 24 hours later.

It is understood passengers were given hotel accommodation overnight by Qantas.

Australian Federal Police officers at the airport were called to the Qantas Club lounge during the afternoon after passengers began swearing at staff

"It was in relation to some harsh words that were being said,'' an AFP spokeswoman said.

"When our officers arrived the situation had been defused.''

Steve Re of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association confirmed the flight had experienced technical problems last night before taking off.

He said passengers were asked to disembark so engineers could fix the problem.

After returning to the airport this morning for a 10.30am departure, passengers were advised of a further delay.

A Sydney Airport spokesman said passengers were still waiting at the departure gate to board the plane at 4pm.

[Andrew M]

People like that should be denied boarding for a minimum of a week.

Just because they are in business class and in the Qantas lounge and more than likely drunk does NOT give them the right to abuse staff.

[Rhys Xanthis]

I would be more than ****ed off if told my flight were delayed for 24 hrs and i payed business fare...especially considering those who do are more than likely to have important business to attend to.

[D Chan]

regardless of their class of travel they should not be abusive to ground staff.
if you're a passenger of this flight you might be justified to be angry but by all means the ground staff and indeed everybody would not prefer this to happen. In any case ground staff are the people who have the least control over these sort of delays - they are just as hapless as the passengers when it comes to delays.

Just to give you an idea - one has to be mentally prepared to deal with potential abusive passengers and if you don't deal with them carefully they'll explode right in your face :

[Nigel C]

Originally Posted by Andrew M

Just because they are in business class and in the Qantas lounge and more than likely drunk does NOT give them the right to abuse staff.

Quite a generalisation you've made there...

[D Chan]

Originally Posted by Nigel C

Quite a generalisation you've made there...

would be true if we were talking about senator bill heffernan (if you remember what happened late last year :P)

I think the words 'platinum', 'gold' or 'silver' are more likely to be used by business pax to justify their abuse

[Andrew C]

There seems to be a spate of delays of QF international flight this week. On Sunday Qf11 & QF 1 were delayed by over 24hrs, this delay.

Could there be some mischief by the unions???

[Torin Wilson]

QF81 on Sat was delayed over 6 hours. The second delay was dodgy. The Engineers told the ground staff 10 mins before boarding there was scheduled maintenance to do, and it took over 3 hours (already had a 3 hour delay, and an aircraft change). Even the ground staff and Captain were slagging off engineers.

[Andrew M]

Originally Posted by Nigel C

Quite a generalisation you've made there...

Yep - Can almost guarantee they would have had a drink or three.

Struggle to find anyone who isn't knocking back a few in the lounge.

I don't have a problem with that, but abuse staff for such a silly reason deserve to be kicked off all Qantas flights for a week I say

[Montague S]

Originally Posted by Andrew M

Yep - Can almost guarantee they would have had a drink or three.

Struggle to find anyone who isn't knocking back a few in the lounge.

I don't have a problem with that, but abuse staff for such a silly reason deserve to be kicked off all Qantas flights for a week I say

struggle to find a reason why you wouldn't get smashed if you were faced with this kind of delay to your $9000 flight.

even better if you can do it for free in QF club.