Karl Stefanovic and his wife Jasmine are the latest big names to be spotted on-board James Packer’s luxury yacht in the south of France.
The 54-year-old Australian billionaire welcomed the Today co-host, 47, his shoe designer wife, 38, and their two-year-old daughter Harper for a day out on the $283 million boat in newly-emerged photos taken last week.
Former Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke, 41, also joined in on the fun, and was spotted with his rumored girlfriend, Jasmine’s younger sister Jade Yarbrough, 30.
The pair were understood to have been introduced by Stefanovic earlier this year, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph in July.
Earlier today Yarbrough, who runs an interior design company, uploaded an Instagram story with a photo of herself and Clarke strolling the streets of the French Riviera.
Meanwhile, Stefanovic is currently enjoying some time off-air, with co-host Allison Langdon being joined on the Channel 9 breakfast show by Nine reporter Charles Croucher.
Packer has been making headlines amid his lengthy stint overseas, which has seen him host a slew of big names on his yacht including actor and business partner Robert De Niro.
He’s also recently opened up about his new-found health kick which has seen him lose 33kg, telling The Weekend Australian in June that he was ready to start the “third act” of his life as he looks towards a return to Australia following a controversial period for Crown Casino.
“I’m roughly 130kg now and want to be back to 100kg by the end of 2022,” Packer told the publication.
Packer admitted that it “hasn’t been appropriate” to be in Australia amid years of scandals at Crown Casino – which he previously owned a major stake of – including staff getting jailed in China, and several inquiries which found the casino operator enabled money laundering and links to criminal gangs.
With the $8.9 billion sale of his company shares to US private equity firm Blackstone’s finalized on June 24, which saw Packer pocket an enormous $3.36 billion, he’s now ready to plan his return home.
“I want to swim with my kids at Bondi when we’re all in Sydney together next year and be 100kg,” he added.
On the love front, Packer has regularly been joined on his yacht by Danish model Josefine Hanning Jensen, who was recently identified by Confidential.
There’s no word yet on whether Packer and Jensen are romantically linked, or whether she will join him when he eventually heads back to Sydney.
Wins don’t come much more emphatic than from 10th on the grid at the Hungaroring.
Max Verstappen’s against-the-odds victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix was only the fourth time someone’s won in Budapest starting further back than the front two rows. Not only was it a clear underline on Red Bull Racing’s superiority in the 2022 championship race, it was also a neat encapsulation of the entire season to date as the sport heads into the mid-season break.
It featured a wildly slow then unexpectedly and inexplicably fast Mercedes that threatened to win the race but ultimately couldn’t manage it.
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It featured Ferrari somehow fumbling what should’ve been an unimpeachable pace advantage early in the weekend to finish off the podium and denying it lacks operational sharpness.
And as its centrepiece it featured Red Bull Racing executing most effectively, Verstappen seizing his opportunities and both ending Sunday with enhanced points leads.
You almost don’t need to have seen any other race this year to understand where the championship stands and predict where it’ll head when racing resumes at the end of August after the mid-season break.
REMINDER: FERRARI TARGETED TO ONE-TWO
There’s no team that needs the mid-season break more urgently than Ferrari, which contributed yet another way to ship more points to Red Bull Racing and Verstappen in an already bleak title campaign.
All this despite having explicitly targeted a one-two finish just days earlier.
It won’t shock you to know that the team’s embarrassing loss came mainly from the pit wall.
Slow pit stops meant it took longer for Leclerc to pass pole-getter Russell than it should have, and it cost Sainz the opportunity to pass the Briton at all.
It then made the fatal error of swapping Leclerc onto the unfancied hard tire for his final stint in a hasty attempt to cover the undercutting Verstappen — despite the fact every other car that had used the tire was struggling badly for grip.
Not only did it cost him the lead, but he was forced into making a third stop that left him an almost unbelievable sixth at the flag.
Ferrari protested after the race that the problem wasn’t its strategy but the car, which in the cooler Sunday conditions wasn’t exhibiting the dominant edge it enjoyed during Friday practice.
Leclerc burnt by ANOTHER Ferrari blunder | 01:14
“Certainly we didn’t have the performance we were expecting,” team boss Mattia Binotto told Sky Sports. “Whatever the tyres, somehow the performance of our cars was not as expected.
“Today the car was not behaving well, I think that’s the point.”
Binotto isn’t wrong to make that argument, but he is exaggerating. Ferrari was slower than it was on Friday, but it was still the fastest car on track.
We can make a like-for-like comparison between Leclerc and Verstappen on the medium tire in the middle of the race, Even accounting for the Dutchman’s older rubber, the Monegasque was still quicker, or at least quick enough to take him on directly.
But the team let itself be spooked by Verstappen’s second undercut attempt with 32 laps to go. Rather than race to its own pace, run deep and switch to softs — which it did with Sainz — it brought Leclerc in immediately for the hard tire and suffered the consequences.
“I felt very strong on the medium. Everything was under control,” Leclerc told Sky Sports. “I don’t know why we needed to go on the hard.
“I said on the radio I was very comfortable on the medium and I wanted to go as long as possible on those tires because the feeling was good. I don’t know why we made a different decision.”
So really there are two key mistakes here. One is coolness under pressure in reading the race, and the other is misunderstanding the hard tyre, which the team thought would warm up after 10 laps but which in reality was never going to be effective. It’s not the first time it’s committed either foul this season.
Leclerc left Budapest with a whopping 80-point deficit to Verstappen and Ferrari is now 97 points adrift of Red Bull Racing. More worrying still, the team’s just 30 points ahead of Mercedes.
And with performance like that, would you be willing to back Ferrari to hold second?
Max & Lewis chuckle at Ferrari’s tactics | 00:33
MAX VERSTAPPEN PUTS ONE HAND ON THE TROPHY
If Charles Leclerc’s solo crash at the French Grand Prix effectively decided the destination of the title, Verstappen’s slick victory in Budapest gave him a chance to put one hand on the trophy.
An 80-point advantage is more than three clear race victories. He can now afford to finish second to Leclerc at every race, including the sprint in Brazil, and ship the point for fastest lap and he still won’t lose the title lead before the end of the season.
Before the mid-season break he’s been able to put the fate of the drivers championship completely in his own hands. No mean feat.
After last season’s down-to-the-wire blockbuster finale, you’ll be concerned to know we can start counting down the points needed to win the championship.
With nine rounds remaining, Verstappen can win the championship with just five more victories even if Leclerc finishes second to him in all of them. That puts him on track to claim the crown at the Japanese Grand Prix.
And perhaps Verstappen winning the next five races is unlikely — he’s yet to win more than three in a row this season — but with Mercedes potentially in the mix, he may have a team to pick points off Ferrari and Leclerc, in which case just finishing with one or two cars between him and the Monegasque regardless of their finishing position would probably be enough to get the job done.
The weekend wasn’t perfect of course. A power unit problem was part of the reason he qualified poorly, and a clutch issue spun him around in the race, temporarily costing him the lead. He’ll also need to serve a penalty for a new power unit at some point in the second half of the year, having installed his third and final motor this weekend.
But the gap is easily wide enough to absorb that pressure, and with Leclerc needing at least one more round of power unit penalties, it’s extremely difficult to imagine a scenario in which Verstappen doesn’t win the title with at least two rounds to spare
Max spins but still wins in Hungary | 01:11
MERCEDES UNEXPECTEDLY FAST BUT UNSURE ABOUT PERMANENCE
Mercedes arrived in Budapest in the brace position, appeared to be justified by its lackluster Friday performance, but by the end of the weekend it had collected its first pole of the year with George Russell and a second straight double podium.
Lewis Hamilton had even been on a late an unlikely charge for victory that team boss Toto Wolff said could’ve ended in success had he qualified higher up the grid rather than suffer a DRS failure in Q3.
What’s more, the Hungaroring layout should have been a struggle circuit for the car, which tends to prefer faster tracks — Hamilton almost won at Silverstone, both drivers showed good pace in Austria before crashing out of qualifying, and the team got both cars onto the podium in France.
Wolff, however, said it was less a case of not understanding the reasons for its speed in Budapest but rather figuring out if those reasons applied universally or only to the specific characteristics of the Hungaroring.
“It’s not that we have no clue why the car has been fast,” Wolff said, per The Race.
“We had directions during the season where we believed it would unlock the potential of the car, and it didn’t.
“So here we have another direction, and that was very quick on the stopwatch.
“But I don’t want to have another false dawn and we come to the realization tomorrow and Spa that it didn’t reap the benefits that we were hoping to have.
“In that respect, let’s just wait and see where this is going.”
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In that respect Mercedes must be frustrated to have to wait three weeks to try to validate its progress, though the triple-header comprising three distinct track types will be the ultimate test of its solution.
The team is long out of championship contention, but the W13’s fortunes are still relevant to the title outcome.
Potentially now quick enough to contend for regular merited podiums and perhaps victories at some tracks, how well Mercedes does on any given weekend will decide three things: how soon Verstappen wins the title — or, if you’re extremely optimistic, whether he wins the title; where Ferrari will finish in the constructors standings; and whether Leclerc will finish second in the drivers standings.
George Russell is now just 20 points behind Leclerc in the battle for a second, with Hamilton 12 points further back, and the team is now only 30 points short of Ferrari in the teams title battle.
It’s too late for the major prizes, but the minor placings are still very much up for grabs.
McLAREN STILL IN TOUCH FOR FOURTH DESPITE RICCIARDO PENALTY
The battle for best of the midfield is similarly still very much alive, with McLaren maintaining its four-point deficit to Alpine in fourth on the constructors title table.
Ricciardo pulls off epic double pass | 00:46
This was an improved weekend for Woking, one week after it introduced its major upgrade package at the French Grand Prix. Not only did Lando Norris again outqualify both French cars, but this week he retained his place ahead of them despite a slow first pit stop, ensuring maximum midfield points with seventh place.
He had Alpine’s unlikely one-stop strategy to thank in part. Alpine did n’t have a second set of medium tires for either driver, having burnt through them during practice, and so he had little choice but to go long, meaning he neither could challenge the leading Briton.
Daniel Ricciardo was the only weak point for McLaren. The Australian had been marginally off Norris’s pace through the race but quick enough to be running behind him before the first stops, even makingthat excellent double pass around the two battling Alpine drivers to hold the place.
But his struggles really started during his final stint on the hard tire and intensified once he was lapped, costing him precious tire temperature each time he was waved a blue flag.
The lack of grip on the white-walled tire was also behind him running wide and into Lance Stroll at turn 2, earning him a five-second penalty, when he was trying to let the Canadian by.
It left him out of the points, allowing a superb drive by Sebastian Vettel to be rewarded by one point, the German having recovered from 18th by avoiding that troublesome hard tire.
Tolu Latu is once again a Waratah, and the hooker could yet emerge as a player of national interest should he keep on the straight and narrow over the next 16 months.
After weeks of negotiations with the Waratahs, the 21-Test hooker signed a one-year deal with the Super Rugby franchise last week.
By doing so, Darren Coleman has opted for the immense capability of Latu over rising hooker Tom Horton to compete with Wallabies incumbent hooker Dave Porecki and Mahe Vailanu.
It can be revealed Horton, 25, will instead join up with England Premiership champions Leicester, who are coached by Eddie Jones’ former right-hand man Steve Borthwick.
Tom Horton is heading to Leicester and won’t return to the Waratahs for 2023 after Tolu Latu signed with Darren Coleman’s men. Photo: Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
With Argentine international Julian Montoya unavailable, Tom Youngs retired and Sydney-born England squad member Nic Dolly injured, Borthwick needs a hooker and Horton will compete for the role once his visa is approved and he touches down in the region.
The short-term deal is the perfect opportunity for Horton to grow after a frustrating few years where injuries have slowed his development.
But the Sydney Uni hooker need only look at his former teammate Porecki for inspiration, with the 29-year-old plying his trade in England for years before an opening popped up back at the Waratahs last year. Porecki’s Wallabies debut was delayed by a year because of an injury, but the experienced rake was one of Dave Rennie’s best players against England in July.
Latu’s return is hardly surprising.
He has been linked to a return with the Waratahs ever since he was let go by Stade Francais earlier in the year.
The Waratahs will have two Test hookers at the franchise with Tolu Latu joining Dave Porecki. Photo: Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
His departure from the Paris-based Top 14 outfit came after more ill-discipline off the pitch and reckless moments on it, which ultimately saw the 21-Test hooker farewelled.
But his incredible potential, where he is one of the best in Australian rugby over the ball and at the scrum, has seen Australian rugby give the cat with nine lives another chance.
It shapes as his last, with Latu to be shown the door if he puts one foot wrong given his history.
Wallaby Tolu Latu has been handed a lifeline by the Waratahs. Photo: AAPSource: AAP
Latu has joined on a contract worth barely six figures, but if he manages to keep on the right side of the boot greater riches lay ahead.
He is unlikely to come into the reckoning for the Wallabies this year unless a number of injuries, but given his outstanding World Cup campaign in 2019 he is a bolter for next year’s tournament in France.
He will compete with Porecki, Folau Fainga’a and Lachlan Lonergan – all three of whom are in Argentina ahead of the Wallabies’ opening Rugby Championship fixture against Michael Cheika’s Los Pumas in Mendoza on Sunday (AEST).
Argentina’s Australian coach Michael Cheika looks on before the series-deciding international against Scotland at the Madre de Ciudades Stadium in Santiago del Estero. Photo: AFPSource: AFP
Sunday’s Test shapes as a season defining one, especially with the All Blacks fighting fires on a number of fronts.
Not only do the All Blacks have the immense challenge of taking on the Springboks twice in South Africa, they are likely playing for coach Ian Foster’s future.
Foster, unlike two of his assistants, might have been spared the ax following their first series loss on home soil since 1994, but New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson hardly filled him with confidence when he stopped short of saying he would lead the All Blacks through to next year’s World Cup.
“He’s certainly the person to lead the team to South Africa, and we’re making sure they’ve got everything possible in the way of resourcing and support to make sure that’s successful,” Robinson told Newstalk ZB from Birmingham.
Robinson’s comments came after former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen said relations between the New Zealand Rugby board and the players were at their lowest ebb.
“The relationship between the board and the [executive] with the players at the moment is probably the worst it’s ever been,” he said on local radio.
“I don’t think they’re doing their job right at the moment.”
While former NZR boss David Moffett called for Robinson to stand down.
The rumblings in the front office, and the lingering feeling the All Blacks have the wrong man coaching with Scott Robertson waiting in the wings, have left the feeling the All Blacks are at their most vulnerable in two decades ahead of the Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup .
There’s a place that gives me the shivers: And not just because it’s cold. The fresh section of the supermarket has become terrifying.
I’m not frightened of the vegetables themselves. What’s different is the numbers on the price tags. They suddenly make vegetables look like luxury goods.
The latest consumer price inflation figures are out and they tell a shocking story.
As the next chart shows, the price of vegetables has gone supernova. It’s hardly the only product to have shot up. Your breakfast cereal and the sandwich in your lunch box are also much more expensive than before. Only one product category fell in price in the most recent data: pork.
The price of vegetables went up a lot between March and June this year because in winter, we get our veg from Queensland, and the state got flooded in March. Fields that would usually be full of happy young lettuces were instead knee-deep in filthy floodwater.
The basic law of economics says when things are in short supply, the market starts raising prices. Only buyers who really want something – and who can afford it – are left buying. The rest of us stop buying. This is what markets do – change prices to make sure demand equals supply. Sometimes that means raising prices a lot to scare off most buyers.
I was definitely put off buying my favorite fresh vegetables by high prices. I bought frozen veg a few times, and even bought brussels sprouts instead of broccoli at one point – talk about desperate times!
The price of fruit
Fruit was up by a lot in the three month period too. It rose 3.7 per cent, which is significant. Berry crops got hit by bad weather too. But fruit inflation would have been a lot higher if it wasn’t for avocados. Those guys have their seed on the inside, so they count as fruit, and they have tumbled in price. Who among us hasn’t shoveled in a lot of guacamole in recent times?
Avocado farmers seem to have gone on a planting spree back when jokes about smashed avo were at their peak. It takes five years or so for an avocado tree to grow enough to make fruit, and now the farmers are pulling in massive crops. Jokes about smashed avocado are over in 2022 however, and in a grim irony, it’s avocado prices that are now toast.
“The additional [avocado] trees started producing fruit around the middle of last year, leading to oversupply and sharp price falls,” said a spokesperson from the ABS when I asked about why fruit prices were not as high as vegetables.
She explained avocados are often eaten in cafes and restaurants, so when we eat at home more the avocado industry takes an extra hit.
“Reduced demand from the food service industry due to lockdowns also reduced demand for avocados during the later parts of last year,” she said.
That adds up to cheap avocados. I bought a bagful yesterday for well under a dollar each.
Pork on your fork
The outlier in the graph above is pork. Why is it cheaper, I asked? The answer seems to be cheap imports. I went digging for data and found the Australian pork industry published loads of information on pork imports. They say that by May 2022 we had brought in a lot more pork – 22,000 tonnes instead of 13,000 tonnes by May 2021. Our extra bacon is especially coming from Denmark and the Netherlands.
That extra supply has helped eased prices after a period early in 2022 where pork prices got a lot higher.
But why are the Europeans suddenly sending us so much pork? The answer is a fascinating one – pigs don’t graze grass like cows – you have to feed them (not unlike people!) and as the next chart shows, the cost of feed as a percentage of the eventual price of the pig got very high in early 2022.
Pig farmers have the choice to either make money by turning pigs into bacon, or spend money keeping on feeding them. They are choosing the former. So ironically, high food prices in Europe may be helping keep down the price of Australian pork.
Jason Murphy is an economist | @jasemurphy. He is the author of the book Incentivology.
There is a strange schism when it comes to the royal family and holidays: The royals love taking lengthy stretches off from the business of the monarchy… but their holiday homes are pretty grim.
Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate where Christmas is spent, looks like the setting of a gothic horror story while Balmoral, Her Majesty’s Scottish home, was partially modeled after a Bavarian schloss. All that forbidding gray stone and all those mock medieval turrets are enough to give even the bravest of young HRHs lifelong nightmares.
And yet when it comes to holidaying, the House of Windsor are nonpareils. Princess Margaret used to jet off to Mustique and crisp herself in the Caribbean sun with egregious regularity (you could probably still catch a whiff of coconut oil long after she was back demanding whiskey in the some London drawing room) while the Queen Mother promptly bought herself a holiday castle – the Castle of Mey – and would decamp there for generous stints, far away from anything so bourgeois as work.
And unfortunately this royal tradition of holidaying like it was a competitive sport is one that William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambrdige, are eagerly carrying on. In the last 18 months they have taken nearly four months off and are currently in the middle of their roughly two month-long annual summer holiday.
While the duke and duchess are set to roll up to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham this week to wave the Union Jack and prove how good they are at cheering, in a normal year, once the final Wimbledon trophy is handed over in July, it’s time to get out the Ambre Solaire, with the duo not returning to their posts until early autumn.
This year, sure June was a busy month for the Cambridges given all that Platinum Jubilee waving they had to do, but as is usually normal, in July we have only seen Kate at a charity polo match and in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, hardly a demonstration of regal elbow grease. (Any sort of ‘work’ that can be done while holding a chilled glass of Pimms hardly counts as hard graft now does it?)
August, as unusual, will see Kate disappear off the radar completely, usually only popping back up around mid-September.
Likewise, in 2021, the only official engagements that Kate undertook in July involved watching tennis and soccer, after which she proceeded to take nearly nine weeks off, meaning that from the end of June until mid-September her out-of-office was essentially on.
The same schedule also held for William, apart from two meetings about the Earthshot Prize he managed to squeeze in and one church service. Gosh, however does he manage to get so much done?
The couple have, in roughly the last year, been to France twice (for Kate’s brother’s wedding and for a skiing holiday) and to Jordan, not to mention spending time in Scotland and Norfolk.
There’s no way around it: William and Kate have a holiday problem.
And, as we all know, the first step is admitting it.
At issue here is that just because they can take months of the year off and that traditionally members of the royal family have, does not mean they should.
For years now, the couple and their team have been focused on building Brand Cambridge, that of them as a hardworking and oh-so-normal couple. Look at them, out there boldly taking the most pressing issues of the day, including mental health and climate change, and then getting home for bath time!
This is the formula that has been cooked up to try and ensure that the monarchy survives yet. The idea seems to be to let Prince Charles be, well, Prince Charles, rabbiting on about hedgerow preservation and delivering the occasional barnstorming speech about the environment and his Aston Martin that runs on white wine (really) and Britons will grudgingly tolerate him.
Meanwhile, alongside all that we have William and Kate pioneering a much pluckier, more engaged and more proactive version of royalty that also features quite the cult of personality.
Central to the nascence of Cambridge Inc. is the couple’s relatability and willingness to be vulnerable. We’ve heard Kate talk about the loneliness of new motherhood and appear on a parenting podcast while William has regularly opened up about the emotional toll that his years of him as an air ambulance pilot took on him and his grief over the loss of his mother.
These touchy-feely outings are not one-offs but a core part of their public personae, all about transforming them into the first senior members of the royal family who are viewed as genuinely human and who are in touch with the real world; who have done more than just spy the hoi polloi when peering out at the world through the window of a golden carriage. (They have one of those of course, but it’s terribly unwieldy for the school run.)
But for all the H&M dresses Kate wears, they are not a normal middle-class family, no matter how many Audi station wagons they add to their fleet and how many times young Prince George is taught how to use the self-checkout at Waitrose.
The duke and duchess can take vast swathes of time off whenever they fancy because they have complete control over their schedules, aside from key events like Trooping the Color and Remembrance Day, meaning they can spend a week on the beach, even if it is in the Cornish Isles of Scilly, rather than at their 19th century mahogany desks whenever the mood strikes.
Nor do they have, as the vast majority of the world does, have a very finite amount of leave to be carefully husbanded and can instead beetle off for some more quality time in famille, Harrods buckets and spades in tow, whenever they fancy.
But, it’s time for the Cambridges to give up this royal perk. They can’t have their nearly one hundred days of holiday per year and still go about trying to sell themselves as the Duke and Duchess of Relatability.
Every time William and Kate accidentally remind the world just how fundamentally not normal their lives are it jeopardises all the work they do the rest of the year to sell themselves as the approachable faces of the modern royal family.
There is also the fact that this pesky bad habit also serves to revive the Lazy Kate narrative that haunted her for years. Prior to their wedding, in 2008, the Daily Mail reported that the Queen thought Kate needed to get a job.
“The Queen has admitted she has no idea what Kate actually does,” a senior aide said at the time and that Her Majesty is “of the opinion that Kate should be working. She believes in a modern Monarchy and feels very strongly that the Royals should be leading by example.”
A source close to Kate said back then, “Mostly she just waits for William to come home so that they can go on another holiday.” (Ouch.)
Then there is the fact that the duo only began full-time royal duties in 2017. Diana, Princess of Wales, by contrast, was chucked in the deep end and shunted off to charm the masses in regional town centers before she had even gotten all the wedding confetti out of her hair.
What anyone worth their Walter Bagehot knows is that the British monarchy, in the coming years, is in for its greatest test since Oliver Cromwell started getting ideas. The next king is a man who garners tepid, at best, support, at a time when the royal house has suffered a series of body blows in recent years it has yet to recover from, thanks to Prince Andrew’s horrifying behavior and the seismic eruptions of Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Things for the Crown are not exactly looking tickety-boo, hence why so much is resting on William and Kate.
And yet, they seem willing to gamble all the gains they have made to take time off from their duties with the sort of enthusiasm that Margraret probably reserved for the arrival of every new 20-something barman at her favorite Mustique watering hole.
Of course the duke and duchess should get a holiday and of course they should not have to apply for leave from their manager (though the image of the 96-year-old Queen spending part of her day green lighting holiday requests from HRHs is fun) . But those crazy kids have to find some sort of middle ground between the extreme privilege of royalty and the image of them as hardworking, ordinary parents who just happen to have the keys to the Tower of London. (Yes, I know, they don’t actually have them but they could certainly get their hands on them they couldn’t they?)
It’s time for William and Kate to channel less Princess Margaret and more Princess Anne. And when it comes to the Princess Royal, the swimsuit industry’s loss has only been the monarchy’s gain …
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
As I found myself stranded in Athens airport, surrounded by unsympathetic airline staff and forced to splash out an extra $2700 on new flights back home, I couldn’t help but feel this all could have been avoided.
Like thousands of other Aussies, I too had a nightmare experience flying with Qantas.
It’s amazing what can happen to a beloved national airline when it sacks 9000 staff, outsources thousands of jobs, moves customer service teams overseas and hands out millions in bonuses to executives.
My nightmare all started when I fell for the trap that is ‘frequent flyer flights’.
I applied for a credit card back in May (disastrous idea), splurged on a new laptop to secure 120,000 bonus Qantas points and booked my first overseas holiday in years.
There was a slight catch, my flights to Europe were from Adelaide – but given I had spent less than $1000 on taxes in addition to my points I thought I had scored a bargain.
I called up the Qantas helpline in a bid to see if they could help me book connecting flights from Sydney to Adelaide – mistake 1.
Instead of booking me a simple flight home from Adelaide to Sydney, they REPLACED my overseas return leg from Athens to Adelaide.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I noticed my overseas leg had vanished and been simply replaced with the domestic flight.
I spent over five hours that night on hold as I desperately tried to explain what had happened to call center workers who struggled to even speak to me let alone understand my complaint.
This is of course not their fault, they are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances. The blame lies with an airline that sacrificed quality, local customer service for cheaper labor.
Just one Qantas call center is located in Australia – and that Hobart team specifically services the airline’s premium clients (the big spenders).
I would wait two hours on hold, before finally getting onto someone – who would then spend 30 minutes attempting to understand my issue, only for them to hang up on me.
After over five hours I finally got onto someone who told me they could no longer get me on my original flight (Athens to Doha to Adelaide) as it was now full.
Qantas has since informed me that the domestic leg wasn’t ticketed correctly – which resulted in my overseas flight being cancelled.
With my trip approaching and still no return leg, I took matters into my own hands and booked another flight via Vietnam.
With so few options available I had to book the Vietnam to Sydney leg with a different airline – Jetstar.
I called up Qantas to make sure that I would be able to get a transit visa at the airport in Ho Chi Minh as I would need to check my bags in and out again during my short four-hour layover between flights.
A spokesperson told me there would be no problems getting a visa at the airport – mistake 2, blindly trusting Qantas again.
Three weeks of blissful travel – visiting my best mates in picturesque Switzerland, a romantic trip in Santorini – finished with me being stuck in Athens after Qantas’ advice was swiftly shot down.
Airline staff refused to let me on my flight as I had no visa – despite the assurances of Qantas it would be fine.
Ironically, the only option presented to me was to spend almost 2000 Euros to get back onto the Athens-Doha-Adelaide flight that I had originally booked months ago – only for Qantas to inexplicably cancel without telling me and then assure me there were no seats on the flight.
Turns out there were seats on the flight Qantas.
And while a seedy room above an Adelaide pub wasn’t exactly how I pictured closing out my trip – I was just glad to get home and be done with travelling.
Qantas’ statement:
“Unfortunately, it appears that the additional domestic flight was not ticketed correctly when it was added to your booking which led to the Qatar Airways booking being automatically canceled by their system.
“Our agent was unable to secure you another seat on that Qatar flight as there were no more reward seats available on the flight.
Our contact centers are not trained to provide visa advice, rather they should direct you to the relevant consulate, and we apologize that this process wasn’t followed.
“We are following up your experience with a full review to help prevent it happening again.”
