QANTAS: Worst performance -100 days to resolve complaints

Qantas had the worst performance in responding to complaints, taking an average of 97 days during 2023. Jetstar took 18 days, REX 19 and Virgin 16 days on average. The participating airlines publish a commitment to a 20 day timeframe for handling complaints.

The Airline Customer Advocate, an industry-based complaints-handling body, released its 2023 annual report this week.

Why it takes 6 months to compile a 13-page report on 1408 complaints is a question I will put to one side for the moment.

Why Qantas performed so badly

The statistics for Qantas are skewed due to a 123-day resolution timeframe in the first quarter of 2023. In the second quarter, this more than halved to 56, reduced even further in Q3 (11 days) and remained under the 20-day commitment in Q4 (19 days).

Customer satisfaction with the Advocates work

Well, it should be no surprise that voluntary surveys of complainants to the Advocate show a deep dissatisfaction with the agencies handling of complaints. In response to a question ‘My complaint was managed in a timely way’, 63% disagreed, with 27% agreeing and 10 % sitting on the fence.

On ease of use of the Airline Customer Advocate, 49% didn’t agree that the process was easy, with 36% saying it was. The fence sitters numbered 15%.

People complained about…

By far, the most complained-about aspects of airline performance were refunds and flight delays. This is no surprise since these are overhangs from the COVID-19 era. Many airlines, but especially Qantas, were slammed for their refund process and delays and cancellations at the time. Qantas was about to be prosecuted by the ACCC until it capitulated and paid an AU$120 million fine for selling already-cancelled flights.

Below is the list and number of complaints by category. The two most complained-about items were refunds (38%) and flight delays and cancellations (35%).

• Refund request = 540
• Flight delay or cancellation = 498
• Baggage services = 111
• Fees and charges = 66
• Loyalty / frequent flyer program = 46
• Terms and Conditions = 23
• Airport customer service = 20
• Cancellation request = 17
• Alleged discrimination = 16
• Inflight Customer service = 13
• Telephone reservation = 14
• Call Centre = 11
• Specific needs = 11
• Website = 8
• Safety = 6
• Airport Lounge = 5
• Security = 3

Statistics and obfuscation

In my opinion, the report as a document, a representation of statistics, and a useful reporting device is woefully inadequate. There are no raw figures, or any way of checking the calculations of the Advocate. For instance, it provides a fairly useless table of statistics of complaints per 1,000 passengers carried by each of the four carriers it catches statistics for (Rex, Qantas, Virgin Australia and Jetstar). That could be useful, except the report doesn’t give us the actual numbers of passengers carried by airline.

In my opinion, it is a fairly unprofessional report. Everything from inconsistency in colour coding in the charts to more inconsistency in the naming of complaint categories.

There is other weirdness, too. We get a graph of resolved complaints by airline with a half-year comparison. There is also a graph of ‘Average days to finalise by Airline’, which is divided into quarters of a year.

By the way, they only resolve 37% of cases, which is pretty appalling, I would have thought. ‘ Resolved’ means the customer accepts the airline’s outcome. ‘Finalised’ is when a case is ‘actioned’ and ‘closed’ by the Advocate, which isn’t really any kind of objective standard.

2PAXfly Takeout

The industry-financed Airline Customer Advocate scheme has been widely criticized, and this report is evidence of why. To me, it is unprofessional and inadequate.

The report fails to provide statistics and evidence for their findings so that they can be independently verified, or at least the premises on which their calculations are made can be confirmed.

The complaints per thousand passengers are particularly egregious, seeming primarily to make the complaint rate look infinitesimal rather than providing any useful facts.

Let’s remember that these statistics only apply to complaints that are not resolved by the airlines themselves. The Advocate only collects statistics on complaints that reach them and meet their criteria.

If the advocate could collect statistics on all its member airlines’ complaints, whether lodged with the Airline or the Advocate, those statistics would be worth considering.

Bring on an independent government-backed airline complaints body!