Can anyone tell me if there is a qantas strike going on now? My impression is that the engineers have been striking for a while, and that it is causing sporadic delays, etc. Is this true?

I've done a web search--but have had trouble finding any current information. What I did find made it look like the strike could go on for months. (we'll be in Australia in early September).

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=839052

Patty,
Thanks very much. I'd forgotten about Flyertalk (had only used it one other time). I just registered and posted a follow up question on that thread.

We have 5 Qantas flights during our stay in Australia, and we really want to try to avoid spending hours and hours waiting around in airports. I'm trying to figure out if we should consider switching to a different airline.

I have 6 Qantas flights coming up next month, 5 domestic and 1 back to LAX. FWIW I'm not too concerned (maybe I should be?). I don't have anything critical scheduled immediately after these flights and can return home a day or two later if need be. I'll be arriving in Australia on Cathay.

I'm mainly worried about 2 of my flights: Sydney to Ayers Rock (because there's only one each day) and Darwin to Cairns. We have a connection in Cairns, and if we are more than about 3 hours late we will miss it and have to wait until the next day.

I called Qantas--they said that Qantas is really trying not to cancel flights where there are only one or two a day. On the other hand, they are "consolidating" popular flights such as those going between Sydney and Melbourne.

Hopefully the strike will be over soon!

Where are you flying to from Cairns, just curious?

I'm also a little nervous. The middle of next month we are flying from Sydney to Cairns, and then on to Port Moresby, PNG. The group we are meeting up with will be leaving early the next day for Mt. Hagen, so we mustn't be delayed and miss the one flight that day from Cairns. I'm seriously considering paying the change fee and flying in to Cairns the previous day.

We're flying from Cairns to Hobart through Sydney. The only reason I'm not worried about that flight is that we don't have any special time we have to be there.

I meant what's your connection in Cairns to, sorry.

Oh, I see. We're flying on Hinterland Air out to Lizard Island.

The Qantas flight out of Darwin is supposed to arrive in Cairns at 10:00 a.m. And then the Hinterland Air flight (their last flight of the day)leaves Cairns at 2:00 p.m. If we don't make that, we have no chance of going out there until the next morning.

I just got an answer back on the flyertalk forum. They said that mainly international flights are affected. And after that, domestic flights between the following cities are next most likely to have delays and cancellations: Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Life is good! I just had a phone call from American Airlines (who we reserved all our flights through) that the JetStar flight from Sydney to Cairns has moved its leaving time 10 minutes, from 7:05 to 7:15. This makes it an illegal connection with the Air Nuigini flight to PNG. So we are now rebooked on a flight that leaves Sydney and goes to Port Moresby via Brisbane, giving us over 2 hrs to make the connection. Yeah.

engineers strike/industrial action is over!!!

The strike may be over but Qantas is cancelling flights willy nilly. This is what happened to us this weekend.

Went to Melbourne on the weekend (DH&DD returning on Sun, me on Mon)

Friday got call from Qantas:
Saturday 9.00am flight SYD-MEL cancelled changed to 8.30am

Saturday afternoon Daughter got sms message to phone Qantas - spent half an hour on phone - not able to get through - find internet access - her flight 3.30pm flight MEL-SYD cancelled changed to 3.00 pm

Check husband's flight - he hasn't been called - obviously it was also cancelled.
Note on website to call Qantas - finally got through - his flight has been changed to 4.30pm. Only flight they can be together is 9.00pm. Lots of complaining and pleading and they finally were put on the 5.00pm flight

I flew back today on 3.00pm flight. Left at 4.00pm. 3.30 pm flight cancelled.

Pretty normal state of affairs with Qantas.

Here's my experience from the past 2 weeks. We had one flight cancellation CNS-MEL. Unfortunately that was the least convenient cancellation for us as there's only 1 daily nonstop on QF so we had to route through SYD which resulted in a pretty long travel day since our destination that day was DPO. The flights we were rescheduled on plus all of our other flights (7 total) operated on time.