Originally Posted by
fineline
Virgin: Been there, done that.
It sounds frustrating, but what can they do better other than answer the phone more quickly? (Which is one of my pet peeves, especially banks...) They can't book you on Qantas, and may not have know the 2000 would depart 2200. Only thing I can see is maybe pay airport hotel for catching the next days flight, I've had that a couple of times on internationals but it's a stretch on domestic.
They can book you on Qantas, they just choose not to. Qantas on the other hand, if there's no other option, WILL FIM people to VA. VA are one of those 'special people' (organisations) that think they can exist in the aviation industry but follow none of its rules/norms. Friends at Air NZ told me it's not just the profit stuff that led them to give VA the flick. All the time they owned 25%, they would send pax to VA via FIM, VA would send them back and this little game would start between the two, VA either utterly incapable of knowing what to do or whatever. Air NZ told me they got to the point where they'd just send the disrupted NZ pax to QF because QF would check them in, send them on their way and then use the NZ Boarding pass stubs to reconcile and get the FIM from NZ.
It was a different story when VA had problems, they'd practically demand that NZ drop everything and fix VA's problem or take its pax.
As to the OP comment. My ex and daughters went to SYD for a football game one weekend back in May. No advice, arrived at the airport in SYD and their flight was cancelled. VA's response was bad luck, you're booked tomorrow, not our fault, find your own accommodation.
They went for a walk around the terminal and someone who actually gave a rats a-se asked them if they were OK. She, while not ideal, booked them to BNE to catch a BNE-MEL flight. Not ideal as I say, but got them back to MEL after midnight. If they hadn't have found that one nice person (ought to have her stuffed as Basil Fawlty would say), they would have missed a day of work had to pay for a hotel, etc. etc.
Pretty average. But worth telling to balance all the vitriol Qantas gets lately.