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The McGuinnesses hadn’t visited their relatives in Ireland since before the Covid-19 pandemic grounded international travel and hiked airfares in the years that followed.
Fearghal and Sarah McGuinness moved across the globe 12 years ago and now live in Queenstown, but it has been more than five years since they last went back to their homeland.
In March, they booked a trip with Qatar Airways for them and their two young children to fly to Ireland in December this year.
But at the time of the booking, the couple had no idea Sarah was pregnant and would give birth to a third child, all prior to their December trip.
“After booking, we actually found out we were going to be having our third child … I was like, thankfully, the baby will be born … We’ll have a few weeks with the baby before we have to get on a plane,” Sarah said.
Fearghal and Sarah McGuinness are travelling to Ireland in December with their children Beau, Paige and their yet-to-be born baby.
According to Qatar Airways’ policy, adding an infant under 2 years does not require booking another seat. For this reason, the pair assumed changing their booking would not be an issue.
“The usual policy is 10% of the adult fare, which we totally understand, that is perfectly fine for us to pay that,” Sarah said.
However, after visiting the airline’s website, Sarah found she could not add an infant to their journey.
“Qatar Airways’ answer was we cannot and will not book the infant onto your existing booking, the only option is to cancel your whole booking and to rebook the exact same flights on the exact same day,” she said.
The couple had paid $10,000 for the original flights. They were told by the airline to cancel their tickets and then purchase another set of flights that included the infant.
“It feels like they are penalising us for having another baby,” Sarah said.
Qatar Airways does not fly direct from Queenstown to Dublin. Knowing this, the McGuinness family booked through the airline for the full journey in the hope it would avoid any travel complications. Jetstar would fly them from Queenstown to Auckland as the codeshare airline.
A Qatar Airways spokesperson said today no changes could be made to the McGuinness family’s booking because it did not operate the Queenstown to Auckland leg of their journey.
The Mcguinness family were told by Qatar Airlines they would need to cancel their flight home to Ireland. Photo / Supplied
“Adding an infant ticket to a new or existing booking is possible, provided that all sectors on the ticket are flown and operated directly by Qatar Airways,” the spokesperson said.
“In this particular booking, the sector between Queenstown and Auckland is operated by another carrier. Thus, Qatar Airways is unable to accommodate the addition of an infant ticket to all sectors but will offer a full refund to the passengers to rebook their ticket.”
Sarah said while Qatar had offered them a refund of their tickets booked in March, they would now have to rebook at inflated June prices and fork out for the separate additional flights from Queenstown to Auckland.
The McGuinnesses claim this left them thousands of dollars out of pocket because of the higher prices of the new flights they needed to rebook.
The estimated total for their Ireland trip would now cost more than $22,000 given all the rebooking complications, Sarah said.
She also said when she spoke to Jetstar directly, the airline said adding an infant would not be a problem.
“They said that they have absolutely no issue with booking the infant onto the Jetstar flight, but they cannot do it for us because they were not the primary booking agent,” she said
The McGuinness family said they took the issue as far as they could with Qatar Airways but felt the company’s call centre was of no help.
“You can clearly tell they’re just reading off a computer screen ... that’s why I was trying to escalate it further to speak to someone who’s not just giving a generic answer but we’re just getting nowhere,” Sarah said.
“They’ve got no empathy they were heartless, unreasonable, just no desire to even try to come to the table to help us out.”
The McGuinesses said they decided to check with other airlines to compare their guidelines on adding an infant to an existing booking.
“I’ve been in contact with Emirates, Singapore, all of those other airlines to just find out what their policy is,” she said.
“All of them have come back saying, ‘yeah, it’s absolutely fine … you can book your flights now and then when your baby is born, just call us up and we’ll add the baby on. No issue whatsoever.’
“I would hate for another family to be in the situation that we’re in. It’s stressful enough thinking about getting on a plane with two children and a newborn without all of this stress beforehand. And you know, and the financial burden is huge as well.”
