Will never book Jetstar again – In July, we booked a long international return trip from Cairns to Copenhagen [Cairns (CNS -> Tokyo (NRT) -> Paris (CDG) -> Copenhagen (CPH)] with return via [Copenhagen (CPH) -> Paris (CDG) -> Osaka (KIX) -> Cairns (CNS)] Only the first leg of the outgoing (CNS to NRT) and the last leg of the return (KIX to CNS) was with Jetstar.

This morning, we were informed that Jetstar cancelled the initial flight from Cairns to Osaka with no alternative option. At the same time, Jetstar has moved our final flight from Osaka to Cairns up to days so that it departs about 40 hours before we even get to Osaka. There are no other options, and we cannot make it.

So now our holiday to see family back in Denmark, whom we haven't seen for over four years, is a bust.

My family and I join the chorus of unhappy customers of a ridiculously poorly managed company, Jetstar, and by extension, Qantas - Both companies should be liquidated and assets handed over to competent management.

EDIT (27/12/2022): The saga continues. I'm writing from Copenhagen., so at least we got here...

After a week and a half back and forth with a travel agent we finally found replacement flights that would still get us home, albeit at less suitable dates than the ones originally booked several months ago.

HOWEVER, the new itinerary would only have included Jetstar on a single flight, the one going out of Cairns, so Jetstar rejected the suggestion from the agent... They ruin our trip and then won't even meet us half way. The other airlines booked didn't have this stipulation and were happy to provide one-way flights... Anyway, that didn't work out.

After another few days we arrived at terrible flights, but ones that satisfied Jetstar's return-only requirement.

We booked extra baggage (10kg overweight for both of us) to go all the way to Copenhagen and paid for better seats up the front. Normally we don't worry too much about seats (we usually wait for the rush to subside, when most of the others passengers have left the plane), but in my experience Osaka international is terribly slow for passport control, even for transfers, and because we arrived fairly late (19:00) and now needed to stay the night, we would have to go through both immigration and customs. So we were hoping to be out quickly and beat the queue.

However, when we got to Cairns airport Jetstar had no record of our booked seats, and even though I could show confirmation of the fact, there was nothing they could do. So my wife and I sat two rows apart, on opposite sides of the plane, at the very back row and the third row from the back, on this seven hour flight.

Jetstar not honouring pre-booked seats (paid and free) was also the experience of many others that we overheard at the check-in counter.

The plane was ABSOLUTELY packed (no wonder with all the cancelled flights during this period), and it was not possible to swap seats with anyone. My wife suffers from anxiety so you can probably imagine it was not a good experience.

We had to stay overnight in Osaka with the new flights, but were not supposed to see our suitcases before Copenhagen. However, when we arrived, an attendant was waiting for us outside the tarmac with our last name on a sign. Apparently we had to pick up our baggage after all and check it in again tomorrow.

I was a bit worried about the bags now, fearing the we would have to pay overweight once again. So I contacted the airline (AirFrance) taking us through Paris to Copenhagen. They said that they couldn't verify from their end what had been booked, but that Jetstar would have "passed on the message" to AirFrance.

Of course, this proved not to be true. Even with our baggage slip showing carriage to Copenhagen, we had to pay an extra $200USD per suitcase... After their convertion to yen (we couldn't pay is USD) And our credit card's converting from AUD > USD > YEN, it came to $599.84... Of course, I can't put the blame purely on Jetstar for this slip-up, but with all the other failures happening on Jetstar's part, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a their fault not communicating the approved overweight.

I'll challenge the extra baggage fee of course, and I'm not in doubt that we'll be refunded, but I'm just so tired of dealing with Jetstar and their rubbish. Everything is a struggle with them.

... Meh, I'm just praying that our final flight back to Cairns will remain, but I won't be surprised if it's cancelled too. Nothing surprises anymore.

My opinion is only even more cemented - Jetstar? never again!