I recently flew with my wife, two infants and a child from Perth to Sydney for a holiday and back (reference 3OP8OD). Being our first flight with 3 very young children, in order to help make the trip as pleasant as possible, I took the effort to ensure that we requested 2 bassinets and called to enquire about what to do if we do not get appropriate seating. I was told that we have been given priority and if we do not get appropriate seating, it will be resolved when we check in. Fortunately, the flight from Perth to Sydney happened as we were advised and I am very happy with the seating we had. In fact, during the check in procedure, I learnt from the very helpful staff on duty that, if there was any issue with the seating, they are able to call on other passengers to reallocate seat to help the situation. Unfortunately, this pleasant impression of Qantas’ service has been marred by our flight back to Perth. Only when we were checking in, did we find out that there wasn’t any bassinet available and to make matters worse, our 3 seats was not at the bulkhead, where we could at least have more room for the infants, but at the back in cramped conditions. The check in staff was reluctant to help even when we asked if she could do anything since we learnt that they are able to reallocate seats if necessary. To make matters worse, she took us for fools by suggesting that it is our own fault. I.E. when we asked how there could not be bassinets, she said that we should have known because we book the flight ourselves. But when I said that we were not advised of the situation when we made the request for bassinets, she simply replied that they would have known which plane would be used for the flight. Clearly, her two excuses are contradictory as she was not in any way interested to assist us. This was further exacerbated when I requested for a fragile tag to be put on our pram (which we were checking in as oversized baggage) because a part of it was broken on the flight from Perth to Sydney. She was reluctant and simply said that they know what it is and the fragile tag is not necessary. But I when I asked that why then was it damaged on the flight to Sydney, she simply said that it because is not a normal luggage. Her answers confound me. It seems to infer that any issue that arises is the customer’s problem. In the end all 5 of us had to contend with the cramped seating at the back which caused undue stress to my 3 children resulting in much crying (the flight from Perth to Sydney had hardly any) Needless to say, the stress was further compounded by the reaction of other passengers around us. All these could have been much alleviated if the check in staff had been willing to assist us on the seating issue instead of treating us like fools.
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