Qantas slips further down the scale (click)

Qantas, our national flag carrier has long been held in high esteem with Australian and world travellers.
But over recent years something is amiss.
They now rank 8th and falling, in the latest international Skytrax survey.

Adelaide for example, the capital city of South Australia, a city with a population of over 1.2 million, is so poorly served by Qantas internationally, that any would-be travellers, need to exit Australia via Melbourne or even worse, via Sydney terminals.

I can recall when Qantas served Adelaide well with Jumbo Jets. Not for years now have they done this. Cost cutting has virtually cut Adelaide out of the international equation. Cheaper to send us to Sydney to depart, and arrive back in Australia. Tough luck that we are so inconvenienced, but that is the Qantas way it seems.

Recently my partner and I had to travel via Sydney to go overseas. We had no other choice but to travel QF for this particular extensive trip.

However, to catch the 11am QF Sydney flight ouot of Sydney, we had to rise at 4am in Adelaide, to catch the 6am, two hour flight to SYD, to board the Qantas international flight.
If QF had served ADL better with their international flights (perhaps SYD-ADL-Shanghai) we would be able to rise at a reasonable hour, to catch a flight around noon, which was heading west anyway.
I can recall when British Airways flew Jumbo's into ADL from Melbourne and vv.
But then with an agreement with code share partner Qantas, not only did BA cease flying to Adelaide, but Qantas shut down most of their international flights here too, soon after.

Of course, we were further inconvenienced when flying home via Los Angeles.
We arrived on the QF flight at 6:30am in SYD. All passengers then went through passport control and customs. The SYD passengers could then go home and be relaxed by 8:30am.

We Adelaide passengers, were treated to collecting our baggage, taking it to a domestic flight drop-off bay, then catching a bus to the QF domestic departure terminal.
We again had to go through security search, and wait another two hours in the terminal before the QF flight finally took us on the 2 hour flight to Adelaide.
We arrived in Adelaide at 11:30am, 5 hours after arriving in SYD from the 14 hour flight from LA.
Qantas domestic terminal in SYD did not even offer free WiFi connection (unless you are a Qantas Club member where you do get connected free.)
Even McDonalds worldwide, offer their customers free WiFi.

Qantas really need to lift their game, to stop their market share decline and service their capital cities including their near forgotten city of Adelaide, much better.

Supporting the international airlines that do arrive and depart from Adelaide should be encouraged. Airlines such as Singapore Airlines (which are soon to code share with Virgin) Malaysian Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Air New Zealand. They all support us more than our own Qantas.