Qantas (QF) Grounds Entire International & Domestic Fleet

Clearly not an AA issue, but this does effect AA FFers who have booked flights or award travel with QF.

thewinchester has sent up a master thread in the QF forum for those who are interesting in getting details/information: LINK.

From the Qantas website:

Grounding of Qantas fleet

Qantas will stop all domestic and international flights from 5pm (AEDT) on Saturday 29 October until further notice. This is in response to the damaging industrial action by three unions - the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), the Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU).

QantasLink, Jetstar, Jetconnect services, and our freight services (Express Freighters Australia and Atlas) will continue to operate as normal.

Qantas is providing a full refund for any flights cancelled due to the industrial action. Customers can also rebook their flights for a later date.

Customers are advised not to travel to the airport unless they are travelling on a QantasLink , Jetstar or Jet Connect flight and are urged to reconsider any non-urgent travel and defer their travel plans wherever possible.

Due to the significant nature of this disruption and the uncertainty as to how long the grounding will last, we are only able to manage customer bookings on a day-by-day basis.

Only customers travelling within the next 24 hours should call our Contact Centres on 13 13 13 to discuss their alternatives.

If you are travelling in the next few days/weeks, please monitor the situation on qantas.com. We recommend that you do not change your booking until closer to the date of departure.
We understand that this will have a significant impact on our customers and apologise for the inconvenience that the damaging union action has caused. We thank you for your understanding and continued support.

Customer Support for customers flying on Saturday 29 October 2011

Domestic customers:
If you are away from home and between flights today, Qantas will arrange accommodation, meals and transfers for you.

If you are away from home and beginning your journey today, unfortunately you will need to source your own accommodation we will reimburse you for reasonable out of pocket expenses including accommodation, transfers, meals and incidentals up to a total value of AUD 350 per person per day. A limit of AUD 250 per night for accommodation and AUD 100 for incidentals (meals and phone calls) per person per day applies.

International customers

Qantas will arrange accommodation, meals and transfers for you.
Full details of how to claim your reimbursement, including an online claim form are available on www.qantas.com. Please ensure you keep all receipts in order to make your claim.

 

Travelingbetter is basically down at the moment, so I'm posting some updates on my twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/xJonNYC
Time being, info is this; AA Agents are being specifically told that they may -not- protect pax on flights occurring after this Sunday-- and to strictly refer pax to QF.
For flights today and tomorrow, normal SCHEDULE IRREG applies and they can protect on OneWorld carriers per usual procedures

 

FWIW the following Qantas flights are not affected:

Qantaslink (regional domestic)
Jetconnect (trans-Tasman except A330)
Jetstar (budget airline)
codeshares on BA, LA, etc

 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...d-worker-lockout/story-e6frg95x-1226181010826