Had the misfortune of booking Qantas airlines from New Zealand to Sydney. Not only did they lose my bags their attitude has been horrific. Checking with several locals I discovered that the reputation for Qantas has gone down in the last five years under the new CEO. I've had baggage lost Before and Qantas's lack of concern is amazing. On a happy note the Hyatt in Auckland was wonderful and the four seasons in Sydney is great

Well, this should trigger a novel from HollywoodBQ.

I remember talking to my Australian coworker about Qantas airlines because I was thinking about flying with them to Australia. He said mate they are the Spirit airlines of Australia, dont ever fly with them lol.

I Am A Critic said:

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Well, this should trigger a novel from HollywoodBQ.

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Did laugh

Full disclosure upfront - I am lifetime Silver on Qantas and I'm about 70% of the way to lifetime Gold.

I have not flown Qantas since the beginning of the scamdemic when I flew from Melbourne to LAX - March 5, 2020.

As a Permanent Resident of Australia, I am unable to travel to Australia or New Zealand right now due to the fact that I don't have my "Right to Return" Visa paperwork in order. Also... after what Australia did during the scamdemic, frankly, I'm not sure if I ever want to go back.

But... I did live there for 12 years and have done, I don't know, maybe 80-100 flights on Qantas. Flown them Internationally to LAX, SFO, DFW, SIN, NRT, KIX, HKG, PVG, WLG, AKL and domestically to PER, BNE, CBR, MEL and ADL, all to/from my former home airport of SYD (Kingsford-Smith).

Having flown 20+ International carriers over the years, frankly, I think Qantas is pretty good. I can count the number of mishaps on one hand. Of course the number of medical Emergencies between LAX-SYD, I'd need two hand to count those.

My only gripe with Qantas is that when you redeem points, they make you pay taxes on the cost of the fare, so my recent redemption to fly First Class on Emirates was about $800/flight versus $9 using American Airlines points to fly on Qatar Airways.

Since I haven't flow Qantas in 5 years, I only know how things were under gay boy Alan Joyce. And honestly, they were pretty good. But, Aussies love to hate on the home team so you'll hear Aussies complain about Qantas all day long. But they're comparing them to Singapore, Cathay, etc. These folks don't have any idea what it's like flying United or American, much less Frontier or Spirit or whomever you want to insert here.

Sorry you had a bad experience but I'll leave you with my two worst experiences on QF

1 - QF11 to LAX, connecting to the Bay Area - I intended to go snowboarding at Heavenly in Lake Tahoe the following weekend so I brought my snowboard with me. On arrival at LAX, they couldn't get the luggage door open on the new A380 for like 2+ hours so I missed my connection in Business Class. I could wait until the following day to get Biz, or, I could jump on American in coach to connect to the bay. So... coach it was - after like a 4 hour delay.

2 - QF73 to SFO on January 31, 2020 - flight out of SYD was delayed by two hours causing me to arrive at the same time as 2 flights from China including one from some city I never heard of called Wuhan. And that became my first round of Covid. Which I took with me to Tokyo, Singapore and Bangalore before heading to Melbourne at the end of February.

Six degrees of separation and all, I see that the new Qantas CEO matriculated at Pymble Ladies College (PLC). My daughters used to play them in soccer and netball all the time - in that swanky Sydney Private Girls School league. I've been to the soccer fields at PLC at least half a dozen times.

Get back to me after you've flown Dragon Air domestic in China, or taken a domestic flight on Air India. LOL

Qantas has benefitted from a near-monopoly for a long time. Virgin Australia has eaten into that a little bit but Qantas are still relatively insulated from a long-haul perspective. That said, of all airlines Qantas should have the AKL-SYD route down to a science, seeing as they do that flight 5-6 times every day.

As Hollywood said, nobody loves bagging on Qantas more than the Aussies because of the airlines behaviour during the pandemic. They're an above-average airline and, on nearly every flight I've taken with them, have been much better than American.

I haven't had any baggage-related issues with them and sorry that happened to you, and that it's cloudy in Sydney today, tomorrow's sunrise should be epic though!