Read what Jetstar told about 200 Japanese tourists when their flight was cancelled……..

A TravelMole subscriber told The Mole this week of his latest experience with Qantas owned low cost carrier Jetstar.

The subscriber went on to say, “I was booked on Saturday 3 November on  JQ18 from Brisbane to Sydney, which turned out to be the  domestic leg of flight from Osaka to Brisbane, with the aircraft carrying on to Sydney.”

“We boarded at just after 8:00am, but it all went belly up not long afterwards and in the end we were all offloaded at 12:00pm, yes we had been sitting on the aircraft for four hours, with the flight finally cancelled at 1:00pm due to an unserviceable engine”.

“I would estimate there were over 200 Japanese passengers who had come from Osaka and going to Sydney on the aircraft, plus a few Australian tourists and about 30 odd domestic passengers.”

“QF engineers were dashing back and forth for the inital 4 hours and some brief announcements were made about a small problem, but in the meantime, what this meant was that we all sat in the aircraft for four hours, no refreshments…..nothing.”!

“At 1:00pm we were all called back to gate and that is when we were told the flight had been cancelled, instructed to collect our bags, which took over 30 mins, yet there were no other flight passengers in bag area.”

“We were then all told that we would all have to take train to domestic terminal, go to Qantas counter, not Jetstar and  they would help.”

“There were heaps of questions by the now angry English speaking passengers, the questions deflected by very incompetent JQ staff, who just evaporated.”  “ The Japanese tourists, all of whom appeared to speak no English whatsoever just looked totally mystified by everything, clearly confused by the whole affair and  amazingly left to fend for themselves.”

“Several QF staff were very helpful , but badly briefed by Jetstar people at the International terminal.”

“As anyone who has dealt with Japanese visitors to our shores, they did not complain at all,  but most certainly will be telling their travel agents and tour operators back home not to book Jetstar , reflecting badly on Jetstar and Qantas and worse than that, the experience reflecting badly on Australian tourism.”

“At the domestic terminal there were very few seats available on Qantas or Jetstar and nobody know anything about us and many of us took hours to get away.”

“I am told that many of the Japanese had to even stay overnight in Brisbane.”

“I must say the QANTAS staff handled it very well when confronted with the problem, but Jetstar was abominably hopeless, with no proper informative communication and no help whatsoever offered to passengers”.

“God help us all with the low cost carriers.” 

“It appears that you are on your own when a glitch occurs.”

“This is all very sad for Australian tourism and our image in Japan where JQ in its magazine says it is making big progress.”

“I’m sure the JQ spin doctors will gloss over this incident.”

[The Mole comments: The Mole sent this information last week to Simon Westaway the head of PR and media for Jetstar asking Simon for any comments he might like to offer, but received no response.”

“As formerly having worked in airlines professonal and a very frequent traveller on investment business, I was appalled, not only by the treatment of the Japanese tourists, but all the passengers.”

“A proper communication and exit plan should have been in place and a replacement aircraft positioned to Brisbane very quickly with the number of pax involved, with full and detailed announcements made and an action by JQ people to win brownie points, but alas all the JQ people ran for cover.

“I hope this is illuminating for TravelMole readers and while it will not get the previous JQ bad Honolulu publicity because it did not involve a plane full of Aussie and also the Japanese will be too polite, but perhaps it should…….!”

A report by The Mole from a TravelMole subscriber