(or a Qantas spin doctor)
I don't work for Qantas, but I see hundreds of people get on their overseas (including QF) flights everyday. I rarely see passengers getting turned away. Clearly, what ever processes the airlines have in place works for 99.9% of the passengers. Yet one pax has an issue and the whole system is B/S? They let her on the damned flight FFS, despite not having gone through the process they would have preferred she follow. Your friend got COVID and couldn't fly. Not the airlines fault, and happened (and still happens) to many, many people. Once "negative" she sits on hold to a call centre for hours to rebook - that sh*tty service is pretty common across all the carriers (not just QF) with limited seats and a lot of demand. She shells out an extra $3000 to get on another flight - was that what she elected to pay to get a sooner flight? Did QF offer her something cheaper she rejected? You don't say, so we don't know. Again, she's not alone there. There's plenty of tales of woe around flying anywhere the last couple of years. Then when she does turn up, there's problems, but ultimately, they get sorted, and she goes. Happy days. How is this:
..... a recent example of a recent Qantas stuff up.
I'm certainly no QF apologist, but apart from the email he said/she said palaver, your friend got rebooked to fly on the 24th and flew on the 24th. If she's had to pay more to make that happen when she needs it to happen, welcome to the airline business. QF aren't alone there by any means either.
It is surely the company's responsibility to make the rebook and check in requirements of their PAYING passengers as simple as possible.
Maybe it
was as simple as possible under the circumstances, given the restrictions and requirements many overseas destinations still impose on persons intending to fly there (which are put back on all the airlines to manage and ensure under penalty of fines). All airlines carrying passengers overseas are struggling with the box-ticking that the destinations still require. It is nothing like pre-COVID times. As far as airlines looking after their paying customers, that boat sailed a long time ago.
I suggest that it is far more common for a received email to be ignored than for an automated system to selectively ignore and not bounce an individual email.
So out of hundreds, if not thousands of people QF are flying around who have a past positive COVID history for which QF and the destinations require some additional documentation and for whom that system is working, QF went out of their way to selectively (either manually or automatically) ignore your friend? Really? Why would they do that? They want you to fly on the day you booked with the least hassle possible. They don't want to be having stand ups with every second passenger. It's a hell of a lot easier for everyone. As evidenced by the fact that your friend did indeed fly on the day she was booked.
If the latter happens, it has been poorly designed, on purpose......
Now you are being ridiculous.
Good business practice and common sense would have a replay email acknowledging receipt of her email with information on what the next step is including words to the effect "if you do not receive conformation within ## hours, please call ## #### ####"
I agree, you'd think they would. They obviously feel they don't have to. That's the only stuff up I can see QF has made in the above rant, and that's just a matter of opinion.