“I was talking to Hothouse Media's Scott Wade last week about his recent, rather unpalatable, airline experience. He finds that Qantas has changed from a trustworthy, customer-based airline into something more financially mercenary. He turned up at Heathrow in December to go to Perth, Australia, to visit family. As usual, he had his golf clubs. However, Qantas had taken away its usual 10kg allowance for sporting goods and was charging $50/kg excess baggage on anything over 23kgs. As Scott's clubs weighed 13kg, this meant $1300 for the round trip, no small amount. "Qantas have a duty to their customers to make it absolutely clear when there have been significant changes to charges," Scott told me. "The ticket conditions never said 'The sporting goods allowance has been cancelled.'” With so many frequent flyers in our industry, we should all be cautious of misleading small print and mercenary motive.”