Why Janine will never fly Qantas again
Janine Craig says she will never fly Qantas again after the airline cancelled her flight from the US 24 hours before departure and left her to battle through a two-day travel nightmare to get home.
The Melbourne public health manager, 56, said it was “fantastic” to learn that the competition watchdog had launched legal action against Qantas for alleged false and misleading conduct over cancelled tickets, following her own experience last summer.
Janine Craig endured what she says was a two-day nightmare to get home from the US after Qantas cancelled her flight at short notice. Eamon Gallagher
She said she’d booked an American carrier on December 1 to take her from Charlotte, in North Carolina, to Los Angeles, where she would jump on a Qantas flight direct from LAX to Melbourne after a US holiday.
But the Qantas flight was cancelled the day before and the rescheduled flight to Victoria left before she was due to arrive in LA. Ms Craig spent hours on the phone with Qantas to find a solution, which came at 3am.
The fix was a 36-hour crisscross journey from Charlotte to Los Angeles to Dallas to Sydney, including one final delay in NSW before finally reaching Melbourne.
She got no apologies along the way, she says.
“I haven’t flown Qantas since then, and I would only fly Jetstar if I really had to,” Ms Craig told The Australian Financial Review.
“In any other service industry the client would get something back in this situation. I’m just talking about an apology. But I got nothing.”
Ms Craig said her experience meant she found the Albanese government’s decision to block Qatar Airways’ bid for 28 more flights a week to protect Qantas, and the carrier’s announcement last week of a record $2.5 billion profit, enraging.
“It all
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