My wife was scheduled to fly tonight from Narita to the Gold Coast. I just happened to check on the flight status around the time of her scheduled departure and was shocked to see it had been cancelled. I called Jetstar and was told that the flight had been cancelled due to the volcanic activity from Mt Ontake which had erupted on Saturday (Mt. Ontake is at least 300kms from Narita due west).
I wasn't convinced so I checked the Narita Airport flight status website and found that every other airline was flying as scheduled, even to destinations that are more directly in the path of the volcano. Here is a link to all flights departing for Seoul: http://www.narita-airport.jp/cgi-bin/ais/flight_search.cgi/sch_pub_trv_eng
If you look at a map of the location of the volcano, it is directly in the path of a flight from Narita to Seoul, however all flights managed to leave in that direction as scheduled. Nevertheless, a Jetstar flight to the Gold Coast, which is in a totally different direction, was cancelled.
I called Jetstar again to ask why all other airlines were flying as scheduled, despite the volcanic activity, and was given the same answer; rehearsed lies!!
Is Jetstar the only airline unable to avoid the volcanic activity? Are their pilots that incompetent?
I think the real reason it was cancelled was that the flight was only half booked and they used the "volcanic activity" as an excuse to cancel the flight, forcing all passengers to rebook and saving the airline money from flying planes that aren't full. Apparently they have been cancelling flights to and from Japan quire regularly in the past few months.
My wife had to travel 3 hours by bus to get to the airport. She obviously wasn't contacted about the cancellation before she left for the airport. I haven't had a chance to speak to her yet as she didn't have a mobile phone with her.
This is now the 4th Jetstar cancellation I've experienced personally. They really are a pathetic excuse of an airline!
I'll be paying the extra money from now on to fly with a decent, reliable airline.
Jetstar flight cancelled due to volcano whilst ALL other airlines fly as scheduled
International
Japan-Tokyo (Narita International)
Australia-Gold Coast
Comments
Hey Benjamin, I'm one of
Hey Benjamin,
I'm one of those stuck at Narita (though flying to adelaide via cairns), though the excuse I got here was aircraft maintenance issues, so conflicting info. Thing is my flight was also cancelled on Sunday as well & they rebooked me 2 days later, then cancelled again. I spent all day today on Narita airport website, checked my emails & jetstar website for cancelled flights, & nothing about canceled flight, only to rock up & bam... Cancelled again.
Your right that Sundays flight was cancelled due to the volcano - even though every single other airline was capable of flying out of Narita...
Seriously NFI what they are doing, I have ended up paying $2300 (for me &my wife)with Singapore to get me out of here tomorrow, because they wanted to rebook us for 2 days time.
I am now $3500 out of pocket with flights/food/accommodation, but at least jetstar will give me $300 in compensation, yay!!! (That's providing I probably stay on hold with them for 5 hours).
Very frustrating, last time I ever fly with them, hoping travel insurance covers it all, will be taking this one up with the ombudsman when I get back, hoping your wife has better luck.
Jacob
Edit
Edit
Hey Jacob Sorry to hear about
Hey Jacob
Sorry to hear about your situation! 2 cancellations in a row is really shocking, and the fact that they didn't tell you about it until you arrived at the airport is totally unforgivable!
Jetstar have really sunk to the lowest levels of service and I hope more people start to wake up to their pathetic lies and treatment of customers. They shouldn't be in business!
At least my wife has her family near Tokyo so she can go there until her rescheduled flight in a few days! Fingers crossed that it won't be cancelled.
I hope you can get your money back and have a much better experience with Singapore airlines.
Ben
My partner has also been
My partner has also been stuck in Tokyo since Sunday. We requested if they could put her back on a plane to her home town to stay with family, but no, she has to drag the kids around with her between the hotel and airport. She was due to fly last night, but I receive another phone call from her 2hours before the flight to tell me it'd been cancelled again. Checked her email, received an email to notify the flight was cancelled at 5:30pm, three hours before the scheduled departure.
I spent some time on the phone to the useless helpdesk. The information they provided to me is the flight was cancelled due to volcanic activity. This advice apparently comes from the local airport. Conflicting stories everywhere.
She can't get on the flight tonight, apparently that's booked solid due to all the rescheduling, she's booked on a plane to Cairns on Wednesday night, then a connecting flight to Brisbane.
No compensation has been offered, is this something they do? Should I pursue this or it's highly unlikely they'll cough up?
Is it worth ringing head office direct rather than the Malay helpdesk?
Hey Grant Sorry to hear about
Hey Grant
Sorry to hear about your situation.
I've experienced 4 cancellations with Jetstar in the past few years and compensation has never been forthcoming.
They are notorious for cancelling flights and laying the blame on maintenance issues or unforseen circumstances such as the convenient vocanic eruption at Mt Ontake. I still don't buy their story of the volcanic activity affecting the flight when every other airline managed to fly out of Narita as scheduled yesterday.
I would take the issue to the airline customer advocate: http://www.airlinecustomeradvocate.com.au/General/Default.aspx
Good luck trying to get through to their head office. From my experience, all attempts at contacting the company have ended up with the Asian call centre.
My husband was booked on
My husband was booked on monday nights narita to gold coast cancelled flight. He managed to get on a flight to cairns connecting to brisbane the following day. However he just arrived in cairns to find his brisbane flight is delayed.
On trying to switch flights to an earlier brisbane flight or even one to the gold coast....his original destination, he was told that they weren't allowed to alter his destination!
How is it they can alter it from gold coast to bris when it suits them but then claim they can't help due to these rules!?
The Japanese volcanic saga
The Japanese volcanic saga was an absolute joke. I was due to leave on the Saturday 27th Sept flight back from Tokyo to Melbourne when I found out by sheer luck the night before that my flight had been cancelled due to "Engineering issues" and was bumped to the 8.55pm flight through Gold Coast instead. What is interesting is that a work colleague of mine has a boyfriend who works for Jetstar as an engineer who says they often cancel half filled flights as it's cheaper to cancel than fly the people so they use "Engineering issues" as guise for being cheap arses. I'm sure this is illegal.
Nevertheless, I didn't get a text nor call to advise me of the cancellation which I was furious about. I was then told on the phone that it was my fault because they didn't have my detail. Great customer service hey? So anyways after a heated conversation I got the evening flight booked and off I went the following day to Narita to discover that the evening flight was cancelled as well due to the volcano (Jetstar being the only airline to cancel it). No text or phone call despite me giving my detail again the evening before. Useless. This then was followed by no staff speaking English where I had to step in as a native Japanese speaker to translate for a crowd of people. We were then told that people on the original Melbourne flight could get 10,000 yen for accommodation but we needed to keep it hush hush, and there was no need to stick around. Great, 70 bucks wasted getting to the airport because they didn't communicate with me and they refused to pay for the transport despite me telling them I had family and the train would be cheaper for them to pay for. To be honest 10,000 yen at the airport wouldn't even cover one night and I ended up staying 2 nights as the following days flights were booked - so I was 7000 yen out of pocket and extremely agitated already at this point (and it was 9.30pm already). I'd hate to even think what my phone bill is!
Rocked up Monday 9am for the 12.45pm flight to find out it was yet again delayed until 6.30pm. No text or call AGAIN. We got 700 miserable yen for food (cheapest food in the airport being 1000 yen) and told to check in and wait inside. On this occasion however we had one English speaker although the staff had to retire from the check in desks ASAP because they needed to go back to their crew hotel to rest if the 6.30pm was going to fly. Rest? But surely they haven't done anything to merit resting? There were families with kids who spent thousands of dollars, walking like zombies from fatigue of remaining in limbo, as well as very old grandparents who were struggling to stay on their feet - yet it took 1.5 hours before the staff told us what was going on as we waited in the queue to check in.
Never again. Think Tiger is bad? Jetstar really takes the biscuit.