Computer meltdown hits day one of Qantas ‘You’re the reason we fly’ campaign
The first day of Qantas’ major brand repositioning has got off to a disapppointing start with the airline’s check-in system crashing, leading to major delays nationwide as staff manually check-in customers.
The glitch came on the same day as the launch of the new “You’re the reason we fly” campaign with print ads in the Sunday newspapers telling passengers Qantas knows they now expect more.
Passengers took to Twitter to share their frustrations. Comedian Adam Hills – who has 73,000 followers – was among those to wade in. And the ABC’s science broadcaster Dr Karl Kruszelnicki – who has 143,000 followers – triggered speculation that the crash was because the bookings system had been unable to cope with the addition of a leap second to the length of the day today at about the time the system went down. Several passengers shared images of lengthy queues at various terminals.
During the problem, the official Qantas account issued one tweet.
Twitter comments:
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Just another example of a company believing they can sell an alternative reality to customers with a slick marketing campaign, despite the facts. These companies seem to believe they can build business with deceit, rather than investing in their infrastructure and their staff so they can actually deliver what they promise. Word of mouth always finds these pretenders out, as the banks have discovered. Qantas has been cutting costs to pad their shareholder dividends and executive salaries &,devaluing the staff contribution for years. Now the service can’t match the image
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Adam Hills is evidence of the woeful state of stand-up comedy in Australia.
We do stand-up about as well as the Germans.
#HopAlongJustAintFunny
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Looks like Karma to me……..
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I am sure Qantas planned this, stuff happens, but as usual any excuse to kick Qantas, one day if we no longer have a national carrier, we will be happy.
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Was the problem with Qantas’ system, or somebody else’s system that Qantas and other airlines happen to use? According to my local paper, the problem was with Amadeus. Can someone from Qantas please clarify?
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INfrequent flyer is right “Just another example of a company believing they can sell an alternative reality to customers … despite the facts”
it beggars belief that a campaign proclaiming the centrality of customers is being released when a couple of months ago Qantas was front page news around the world for abandoning its customers by grounding its entire fleet
does Qantas think its customers are stupid? forgetful? that they only watch and read media for the ads, not the editorial?
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The customer experience is what will sell or bury the airline.
At every turn the experience is poor, from check-in to entertainment (not working) to frequent schedule delays. The investment on-line is very nice, but probably not best spent when so much else is lacking?
The fundamentals are letting down the business and no amount of “clever” marketing will fix the flaws.
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This system outage was not specific to Qantas. The globally encoded booking system used to check-in customers to airlines across the world actually failed. The outage had nothing to do with Qantas’ brand campaign.
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Murphy’s Law.
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How is it Karma?
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@Will, I think it’s an obtuse reference to the ECDs personal soap box ‘BrandKarma’… I may be wrong, but I think Groucho’s comment is more about Qantas’ dogma running over their Customers’ karma – not the other way round
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