Long suffering Qantas passengers already slugged by some of the highest prices in Australia were facing with long delays and little help from the airline as they tried to leave Mount Isa airport last week.
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The problem began last Wednesday when Rhys Lillico and his partner were flying to Brisbane so Rhys could start a new job on Thursday morning but things went from bad to worse with a litany of problems.
“The flight was delayed an hour due to poor weather in Brisbane, we eventually boarded and got to the tarmac when he had to stop because the runway lights not working,” Mr Lillico said.
“We sat on the tarmac for an hour before the turned the plane around, then they told us they can’t fix the lights and we sat on the plane for another two and a half hours and without any information they told us we couldn’t fly tonight and they put us up in accommodation.”
On Thursday they got no infomation about a new flight time but saw a sign on the door that a bus would pick them up at 11.30 and their new flight time was 1pm.
“We came back to the airport, checked in, but there was a problem with the plane and told at 2pm we’d be flying out, but that got delayed another hour,” Mr Lillico said. “The engineer came out from Brisbane, found an issue and they said we can’t fly to Brisbane, we will ‘limp’ to Cairns – obviously that didn’t give much reassurance it was going to be a safe flight.”
But even limping would have been an advance on what did happen.
“We finally got onto the plane around 3.30ish, we’re all good to go when the bad weather hit for the next hour, we then went out on the runway to take off, fired up the engines and then said there’s a storm we can’t leave,” Mr Lillico said.
“We sat on the plane for another three hours with no information at all and we noticed they hadn’t put our luggage onto the plane and hadn’t told us why and when I asked the air host he came back and told us it would have made the plane too heavy to fly to Cairns and they were going to fly it to Brisbane, but I only found that out because I asked the question.”
When they got off after three hours they were told they had to spend another night in Isa. A disgusted Mr Lillico and his partner managed to get another flight to Townsville with no sign of the Qantas issue being resolved.
UPDATED 10am: The line about Qantas deliberately ignoring the North West Star has been removed.
Qantas communications team said our email to them “slipped through the cracks” and they are now seeking a response for us.
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
