QANTAS’s horror run on the Mount Isa – Brisbane route continued with a series of delays and interruptions on Friday.
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Krisztina Toth, her husband and their toddler were on the 9am flight from Brisbane to Mount Isa but they were in for a day of drama.
“An hour into flight we had to return to Brisbane because some technical issue came up,” Ms Toth said.
“We landed in Brisbane a few minutes after 11. Than the Customer Service person explained to us we will be coming home with the next flight and gave us a $20 voucher to use at the airport.”
However the the next flight was delayed and they finally did not take off until 4pm.
An hour into that flight and Ms Toth could sense there was something wrong again.
“I told my husband this plane is completely turning around as you can see it and feel it,” she said.
“In the next minutes the pilot confirmed. We had to go back to Brisbane again with the same technical issue.”
Ms Toth said the third attempt took off around 8:30pm and arrived in Mount Isa at 10.40pm.
“I freaked out yesterday. And me and my husband also with an active 21 months old bub stuck at the Brisbane Airport or making flights back and forth to Mount Isa all day yesterday,” she said.
Qantas said they have apologised to passengers flying between Mount Isa and Brisbane on Friday who experienced disruptions to their travel plans.
“A mechanical fault on our morning flight from Brisbane triggered rolling delays to our operations on the route through the day,” a spokesperson said. “We know this would have been a frustrating day for our passengers but we’ll always put safety before schedule. Our teams worked hard to manage the delays and minimise the inconvenience and we added an extra service on Saturday.”
Qantas said a mechanical fault on the morning flight to Mount Isa which required the aircraft to return to Brisbane for maintenance, had a cascading effect with separate events impacting the remaining inbound and outbound flights Friday.
“Passengers in Mount Isa were offered the option to move to the evening flight to Brisbane when the early afternoon flight was cancelled,” they said.
A replacement aircraft then experienced a bird strike on landing in Mount Isa, an unrelated event.
“On arrival it was deemed the aircraft was not able to operate the outbound flight to Brisbane and the flight was cancelled,” Qantas said.