Qantas check-in anger
A report in The Sydney Morning Herald says that an ill-timed trial of a new baggage check-in system is being blamed by angry passengers for chaotic scenes at Qantas’s Sydney domestic terminal.
Flights were delayed, passengers said they were queueing for more than an hour, and scores of passengers found themselves waiting in line at the time their planes were due to take off on Monday.
One traveller, Peter Merrill, said he and his wife, Katy, missed their 10.15am flight to Cairns.
They had hoped to race through the domestic luggage check-in when their previous flight from Shanghai to Sydney was delayed by 90 minutes this morning and arrived at 9.30am.
But that bid was dashed when they were greeted by spiralling queues at the luggage check-in.
“We heard the final boarding call not long after we joined the queue,” he said.
“The next flight to Cairns is not until 1.25pm, but if that’s all booked out then how are they going to get us all on the plane?” he asked.
Keryn Chisholm, 33, said staff had announced over a loudspeaker that a new check-in system was causing “extended delays”.
Ms Chisholm was in the queue chaperoning her mother, who was flying to Brisbane.
After joining the queue at 9.45am and still waiting at 11am, with her mother’s flight to Brisbane scheduled to leave at 11.05am, Ms Chisholm said: “Imagine testing this new system on a Monday morning.†“Why not do it on an afternoon when it’s quiet – it’s unbelievably dumb.”
She was later told at the check-in counter that her mother’s flight had been delayed by an hour.
Qantas staff at the terminal are plucking passengers from the queue who are booked on flights leaving soonest and rushing them to the front of the line.
Passengers were told at 11.45am over a loudspeaker that the baggage belt was overloaded and “the boys are trying to clear it”.
They were later told two midday flights to Perth and Melbourne had been delayed by half an hour.
One passenger, who did not give his name, said: “Some of the Qantas executives should come down here and try to catch a Monday morning flight and see if they still want to sack hundreds of workers.”
Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon recently announced the airline was axing 1300 jobs to cut costs.
Today’s drama follows a 10-week wage dispute with flight engineers, which resulted in rolling strikes and scores of cancelled flights.
A Qantas spokesman confirmed that a new system was in place, but denied that it was responsible for people missing flights.
He also claimed the queues were “about 15 minutes long”.
“We are implementing a new ticketing and boarding system over the weekend, so we have had some minor delays because of that,” he said.
“It went in over the weekend.” “Some staff have come in and it’s the first time they have used it, but we have got extra staff on.”
A Report by The Mole from the Sydney Morning Herald
John Alwyn-Jones
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