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Jetstar ended 2023 the same way it did the rest of the year: with angry passengers.
After a year of canceled flights, delays and misplaced bags, the low-cost carrier did something that experts say no airline had ever done before: It dramatically refunded a flight to the airport it left from because someone had filled out the paperwork.
Flight JQ35 was packed with tourists from Bali when it left Melbourne on Tuesday night after being delayed for five hours.
Then after 4.5 hours of travel, with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner somewhere over Broome, Western Australia, he was forced to turn around and fly back to Melbourne.
Two of Australia’s best-known aviation experts told Daily Mail Australia they had never heard of anything like this happening anywhere in the world.
“I’ve been doing airline research for over 20 years and I’ve never heard of this happening before,” said Greg Bamber, a professor at Monash University in Melbourne and co-author of the airline industry book Up in the Air.
Flight JQ35 was packed with tourists from Bali when the plane left Melbourne airport on Tuesday night after being delayed for five hours. In the photo, a Jetstar aircraft.
A Jetstar spokesman said the airline switched the Melbourne to Bali service to a larger Boeing 787 aircraft to carry more customers over the holidays.
“Unfortunately, due to a lack of internal communication, we did not get approval from the regulator in Indonesia to switch to a larger aircraft,” the spokesperson said.
Geoffrey Thomas of the airline safety and quality review website airline ratingsI had never heard of anything like the Jetstar mishap before.
He was clear where he believed the fault lay.
“First of all, the Indonesians did not push the plane back,” Thomas said.
“Jetstar returned the aircraft because Jetstar had not properly requested permission for that aircraft to fly.”
Mr. Bamber agreed, saying that “Jetstar seems to be, to some extent, blaming the miscommunication, but then blaming the Indonesian authorities.”
The Jetstar flight to Bali (pictured) was already five hours late before it left Melbourne.
BILATERAL
Before an airline can operate international services to another country, the government must first negotiate a treaty-level agreement with the destination country.
These treaties are known as bilateral air services agreements, and that’s what caused the problem with flight JQ35.
Treaties known as bilateral air services agreements are part of what caused a Jetstar plane (pictured at flight path) to turn around
“With bilateral agreements between countries, there are capacity agreements,” Thomas said.
‘Jetstar has increased capacity in that service from a 210-seat aircraft to a 300-seat aircraft, from an A-321 to a 787.
“And they made the mistake that, when they sent the documentation, they did not identify the fact that it was a change of aircraft, an increase in caliber of the aircraft.”
While it is possible to reduce the track gauge of an aircraft (go to a smaller aircraft), it is not possible to increase the track gauge under a bilateral agreement without informing the destination airport.
Pictured are Greg Bamber (left) and Geoffrey Thomas (right), both aviation experts.
But that’s exactly what Jetstar did.
“They realized their mistake when the plane passed right in front of Broome and they turned around,” Thomas said.
“I hadn’t even entered Indonesian airspace, I was still in Australian airspace.”
NO LACK OF RESPECT
Thomas said that what happened was due to human error and that he did not mean to disrespect the Indonesian authorities.
“It’s a very sensitive thing with the Indonesians, so Jetstar just didn’t want to upset them,” he said.
‘It was definitely a human oversight. There is no way they would think “This will be fine, don’t worry about it” as evidenced by the fact that they turned around.
“It would have damaged relations with a very important country that they deal with all the time.”
Some customers shared their complaints online, with one calling it “the worst travel experience of my life” (above)
He said that if Jetstar, realizing its mistake, had gone ahead with the flight and tried to cheat, Indonesia would have taken it as an insult.
“But the fact that Jetstar saw their mistake and turned around… Indonesians would have taken that as a positive,” he said.
‘(They would have thought), ‘Hey, you made a mistake, you didn’t try to bluff your way and you went back.’
“So I think it’s a positive thing from that perspective… Although it was a pain in the neck for the passengers, that was by far the fastest thing that could be done.”
PRESSURE ON AIRLINES
Mr. Thomas said there are many reasons why we are seeing more flight cancellations than ever before.
“Airlines are under pressure with the Christmas and holiday periods with a lot of travel and because of Covid, departments may not be as staffed as they normally would be,” he said.
“The stress is much higher, particularly at the back of the airline, so errors can show up.”
Mr Bamber said understaffing was a major contributor to the problems.
The frustrated customers took off on the flight at 11 p.m. Tuesday, but were told at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday they would return to Melbourne airport (Pictured, passengers in Melbourne)
“Airlines, and the Qantas group and Jetstar in particular, were very quick to lay people off, to make them redundant when the pandemic first hit,” he said.
They fired thousands and thousands of people and got very large compensation from us, the taxpayers, to keep the airlines afloat.
“But they have been very slow to rehire people, to rebuild staff.
“They’re still running on a fairly small staffing, much lower staffing levels than before covid-19 hit.”
LESSONS TO LEARN
Airline passengers who are severely affected by delays and cancellations in Australia do not have the same type of protection as those in the European Union, the US and the UK.
“Something that comes out of this should be a call to Australian regulators and legislators to introduce such a scheme, because it is an incentive for airlines to treat their passengers and customers better,” Bamber said.
“And it also gives something back to customers if they are severely affected. There is nothing like it in Australia at the moment.
The passengers (above) landed in Bali shortly before 9:00 p.m. local time on Wednesday, but faced new problems with pre-arranged accommodation and transport.
He said that while the cost of flights has gone up, the level of service has gone down.
“People are paying much higher airfares now than they were before the pandemic, so people’s expectations are pretty high,” Bamber said.
‘Since they are paying a lot of money, they expect good service, but the service is not good.
“The quality of the catering has gone down, the number of cancellations has gone up, the delays have gone up, so there’s a real disconnect there.”