welcome stranger -
You cannot book HBA-PPP as a connection. You would make two totally different bookings. It would be no different to booking HBA-MEL on QF, MEL-BNE on DJ and then BNE-PPP on JQ. You actively must make two separate bookings - thus absolving JQ of any liability. They did not sell you travel from HBA-PPP.
If you book MEL-PPP on the QF site. It directs you to two different booking engines but on the same screen. It tells you that you make two payments. But QF offers you the MEL-PPP city pair in its initial booking engine. Hence the responsibility to get you there somehow.
I have a question. If you flight has a scheduled departure of 0830 (meaning a check in cut off of 0800) and the inbound is delayed and the revised departure time is 0900. If you show up at 0810 can you still check in? I think it would be fair to say you should as the airline is late - needs to work both ways. In this case anyway.
The conditions say check in closes 30 minutes prior to departure. It doesn't say 'scheduled' departure. It doesn't say 'actual' though either. Dunno.
SydGirl -
About planes waiting for no one... One morning in NTL they would not close check in despite it being -10 before departure with all checked pax onboard. The supervisor at check in wanted to wait for a no show Chairman's Lounge customer who rang said he was two minutes away. Anyway at -5 the supervisor rang and the guy again said "Two minutes" and hung up. This caused an almost brawl amongst the staff at NTL about holding for this guy (a politician). Another check in agent repeatedly tried calling this loser to get no answer. At departure time the man swans up to check in, then buys a newspaper. Eventually he made it to the aircraft then abused me for the lack of "the big seats" (some a/c had J seats sold as Y) and no coat cupboard then he ordered the Purser to close the door. We couldn't until Load Control sent through the paperwork. They got busy and it took another five or so mins. Anyway we ended up departing over 10 minutes late because of this guy. And it was he who still kicked up the most stink!
I praise JQ for sticking to their guns. Yeh they could do without the bad publicity. But at the end of the day it is saving them stacks of money using this procedure.
Until DJ has a cost base lower than JQ's I really don't see them being a big winner. (Won't go into it but DJ's yield management where connecting flights are concerned is just a joke! You can fly MEL-SYD-CNS for $99 but if you want to fly just MEL-SYD on the same sector it's $235!!!. Really clever.)