Qantas is battling to deal with nightmare queues at Melbourne Airport this morning after a nationwide computer outage grounded flights on Sunday evening.
Travelers looking to jet from the Victorian capital to Sydney today were met with huge lines snaking all the way to the international terminal as the airline struggled to deal with the “domino effect” caused by the IT glitch.
“(The queue) snakes all the way back pretty much to the international terminal,” Today reporter Christine Ahern said.
“On top of this, there’s a fairly long queue for the service desk as well because there are three canceled flights to Sydney. So, people are trying to be rebooked on other flights.”
According to the carrier, the issues began at 2.30pm on Sunday, with at least a dozen flights affected.
By Monday morning, several people had taken to Twitter to share angry messages about their flights being cancelled.
The latest issue to hit the embattled airline has also led to renewed calls for CEO Alan Joyce to stand down.
Hello @Qantas. Again flight cancellation W*F. ‘We are sorry we had to cancel your flight QF417 from Sydney at 06:45 on Mon 1 Aug’. Alan Joyce please resign,” wrote a Twitter user.
Qantas forced to increase costs
Recently, Qantas was also forced to cut several flights from their schedule, while hiking up the price of domestic flights due to higher fuel costs.
On Thursday, the airline said they had been pushed to “rebalance capacity and fares,” so they could increase the number of passengers flying on the remaining flights.
Prices saw an increase of up to 2.6 per cent, adding around an extra $10 per ticket. This comes as jet fuel has seen increases of 28 per cent throughout 2022, soaring at prices of around A$208 a barrel.
Speaking to 2GB’s Ben Fordham, Qantas Domestic and International CEO Andrew David said that flights would be reduced over July and August and apologized to customers.
“We are the national carrier, people have high expectations of us, we have high expectations of ourselves and clearly over the last few months we have not been delivering what we did pre-COVID,” he said.
“We have reduced some of our flying this month and we’re planning to do the same next month, recognizing the operation pressures we have.”
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