Baggage staff fail to load animals onto Qantas Darwin-Sydney flight, leaving them stranded overnight

Several animals were left stranded at Darwin International Airport on Wednesday after baggage handlers failed to load them onto a Qantas flight to Sydney.

Three animals were left stranded at Darwin International Airport on Wednesday after baggage handlers failed to load them onto a Qantas flight to Sydney.

THREE animals were left stranded at Darwin International Airport on Wednesday after baggage handlers failed to load them onto a Qantas flight to Sydney.

TheNT News understands two dogs and a turtle were left behind in their carriers when QF840 departed about 2.30pm.

It comes after Qantas cut about 65 ground-handling operations jobs in the Territory when it outsourced the entire service earlier this year.

It also follows two other incidents last week – including one in Darwin – where baggage vehicles crashed into Qantas planes on the tarmac.

Transport Workers Union (TWU) SA/NT branch secretary Ian Smith said Wednesday’s incident was “absolutely” a consequence of Qantas’ move to outsource ground operations. “We’ve seen the safety incidents, now we’re hearing about incidents where people’s luggage, pets and livestock aren’t arriving,” he said.

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“This is what happens when we engage in a race to the bottom and let greed take over safety.

“It’s a recipe for disaster, and we’re starting to see those disasters starting to happen.”

Mr Smith said while baggage oversights happened “from time to time”, the recent run of incidents involving Qantas flights was cause for concern.

A Qantas spokeswoman said failure to load animals onto flights was unfortunate but did happen sometimes, including before baggage handling was outsourced.

“We know that no one likes missing a flight – turtles and dogs included – but unfortunately these things happen occasionally, including when ground handling was done in-house,” she said.

“Only since the outsourcing is the TWU commenting publicly on these incidents and the travelling public deserves to be cynical about that.

“The animals were cared for overnight and travelled to Sydney the following day.”

Qantas is looking into how the animals came to be left off the flight.