Qantas – Engineering Industrial Action part 2

I am writing this piece in Gladstonia. My flight early this morning (6.20am) was not affected by the industrial action. The Qantas engineers are demanding a 5% pay rise but the management is only willing to give 3%. Hopefully it’ll be clear by tomorrow. I don’t want to be stuck in Gladstone for another night. Also, I’ve already got appointments set for Thursday.

no tarmac for De Havilland DHC-8 400 Series (QF2300)

A colleague of mine just advised me that things might get worse as Qantas engineers are planning to have a nationwide strike tomorrow.

Because of this industrial action even the Qantas website was slightly affected. I didn’t manage to check-in online as that facility was not available for my flight. I had to be extra early to go through the whole check-in process. But thankfully, as mine was quite an early flight Brisbane airport was not yet that busy by the I got there. But I was quite surprised to see when I checked-in (using the check-in kiosk) that there were only two unallocated seats left in QF2300. It’s either the online check-in was made available again last night or everyone else on the flight were at the airport much much earlier than me.

boarding pass printed by the check-in kiosk

Anyway, thanks to my Gold frequent flyer (GFF) status, I always get my seat preference allocated to me (window on domestic flights) most of the time.

The flight was quite uneventful (which is the best kind, if you ask me!). We were served muffins, orange juice, water, tea/coffee, and some sesame seed snack that was quite tasty. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take any photos this time as I had no other camera with me apart from the one in my phone. It was a total “mobile ban” on this flight.