Qantas passengers abuse crews over failing entertainment system
Fairfax has reported over the last few days that Qantas passengers are becoming openly abusive and threatening over failures in the airline’s multi million dollar entertainment system on long-haul flights.
The problem, which appears the be affecting 27 aircraft in Qantas’s 747 400 fleet and 10 Airbus A330 300 aircraft, has become so common that the Flight Attendants Association of Australia has formally complained of cabin crew exhibiting “stress related problems” caused by aggressive passengers.
Qantas has formed a team to fix problems in the audio and video on demand system, which has left passengers without movies, music and other entertainment for extended periods of their flights.
Qantas crew also say that overhead reading lights connected to the system have also been rendered useless for hours.
On January 19 the association wrote to Qantas management about the entertainment system, the association saying that the airline had a duty of care to better protect cabin crew against angry passengers.
Association President Steven Reed told The Sun-Herald yesterday some cabin crew were becoming so upset by the abuse that they became physically ill.
The Sun Herald also says that last week Mr Reed requested a meeting with Qantas general manager of aviation health services Dr Ian Morrison and Qantas occupational health and safety committee chairman Michael Von Reth to devise a strategy to help staff cope and that Qantas Executive General Manager of Engineering, David Cox acknowledged the problems, adding, “As with any complex system there have been some technical issues”.
“The problems usually involve a small number of seats and the passenger can be moved to a different seat in these cases.”
We are dedicating considerable resources to address these reliability issues, including through the supplier Rockwell Collins.”
www.smarthouse.com.au, a technology website, has received complaints from its readers, with some seeking to alert others about the problem, with Avron Newstadt, 36, of North Bondi, who flew from South Africa with Qantas before Christmas, saying, “When I got on I realised pretty early into the flight that my TV wouldn’t load, but I was fortunate that my neighbour’s was working and we swapped for part of the flight while he slept.”
“The staff were confused and were doing their best to fix it, albeit unsuccessfully.”
“We weren’t warned about it happening.”
“We weren’t offered any compensation either, although I didn’t want to make a fuss.”
“There were blocks of seats that had the same problem.”
The Mole experienced the same problem on a recent Mumbai flight, with the passenger involved unable to move to another seat because there weren’t any!”
Report by The Mole with some material from The Sun Herald
John Alwyn-Jones
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