Qantas – The Smug Airline

Often I sit on planes and the passenger next to me discusses with me their experiences on planes and singularly Qantas comes out on top every single time as the worse.

There have been so many bad experiences, I think I might just write a book. I am sure alot of people can resonate with the experiences I have had.

To start with;

a)  I have male friends who have had air hostesses pick them up on the plane (they have all been married but very wealthy and always sitting in business or first class). Likewise, friends who have been sports stars have had hostie’s pick them up on the plane.

b) I have seen a hostie refuse to put hand luggage for what looked like an 80 year old woman in the overhead locker because ‘it’s not their job’. I quickly stepped in and helped the poor little old lady out.

c) I have seen them snap at people politely asking them for a drink

d) They have lost my luggage at least 50% of the time I have travelled internationally which is a minimum of 3 times per year

e) They have lost my dog and sent her to another state at least 3 times in the last 12 months

f) The longest I have waited locally for a flight from Brisbane to Melbourne is 6 hours

g) And there are many more great Qantas experiences. Definitely enough for a book!

Today, I was rung by one of their people, who I unfortunately did know. He is the best friend of a very short-lived relationship that I would rather forget who smugly told me that a particular benefit I have received for the past 7 years is being revoked because I don’t spend more than a $1 million dollars on their airline. They are apparently not allowing people who don’t spend this sum of money to remain in a particular club. Apparently… or is this a little lie? Unfortunately, it is the latter. I have more than 30 friends that receive this privilege and none of them spend anything in the vicinity of this amount of money and they don’t particularly have any contacts in Qantas but are still happily receiving this privilege.

Now, I have never thought much of Qantas and now I think even less. What is important to a brand is its integrity and when their top people lie for the sake of lying, then it’s not a very good representation of this.

One bad experience in social networks could mean millions of people hear about it.